At Fossil Valley, We Got Lost Along the Skyline
by Cryptographic DeLurk
Summary: After the time devourer is pacified, Riddel decides to stay in the other world with Dario, leaving Glenn to deal with a mess he's been dealing with since he was five years old. Also, with both Einlanzers, everybody seems to think he's some kind of hero... or something(?) Glenn/Karsh. Also Karsh/Riddel & Dario/Riddel. Fic pretty evenly split between pre- and post-game.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So my first reaction to the Masamune sidequest and the Dario/Riddel/Karsh love triangle was the desire to make an incredibly strained and difficult situation even more incredibly strained and difficult by adding Glenn issues into the mix. (ﾉ*｀▽´*)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻

Also, no need to point out the futility of writing slash for side characters in a game that nobody has played in ten years, if ever. #winning

* * *

 ** _Prologue_**

.

.

Everything had gone pear shaped over at Fort Dragonia. First the General had been gravely wounded. Then Serge had turned violently on Kid. And after that, Zoah and Karsh had burst into the room shouting angrily (Gods knew where Marcy had gotten off too!), Lynx had disappeared amidst the pandemonium, and Serge and Kid had disappeared as well. That left Glenn and a dozen other misfits running about the fort, the teleporter having apparently malfunctioned before disappearing off the face of the earth.

Karsh and Zoah had disappeared quickly after that, in an attempt to save General Viper. And to report back to Miss Riddel, of course.

Glenn had huffed angrily. Even without Riddel in the picture, when had Karsh ever thought to look back at him, check on him?

And then the entrance to Mount Pyre caved in.

If it wasn't chaos before then, it was at that point.

Doc seemed to lose all hope and spent his time sitting with his head in his hands and kept muttering about all the people he couldn't save. Pip and NeoFio ran around in utter terror. Luccia gave disturbing speeches on the historical record of cannibalism. And the rest of them… they had been irritable and high strung to say the least.

It had taken a good two weeks to scale the mountains around the fort and return to the boat (which had, thankfully, not been lost or stolen in the interim). Glenn wasn't sure how exactly they had kept it together, but he knew a large part of it had to do with Macha and Leena, both of whom had a firm demeanour and a motherly touch. They had, together, soothed, coddled, and beaten everybody into shape with the fierce determination that, one way or another, they would be getting home, every last one of them. Glenn would never doubt the wisdom of using kitchenware as weaponry ever again.

There was something about women that Glenn admired, although he could never pin it down quite. He saw it more strongly from Leena and Macha and Zippa, than from Riddel, but even with her he could still see glimpses of it from time to time: a posture and will unwavering as stone. He still wondered if that feeling of admiration was anything like the love Karsh or Dario had felt for her. He wanted to ask, but he couldn't ask Karsh. He could have asked his brother, were he still alive. Why hadn't he thought to ask while he was still alive?

He still wondered if, maybe if he could multiply that admiration a hundredfold, he could fall in love the way he should.

Those were thoughts for desperate nights, camping under the stars, and wondering if you would ever make it back to Termina alive.

The thoughts changed after they had actually made it back to Termina, after stopping to drop off the others at a handful of places all around El Nido. Macha had dropped him off at the port, and Glenn had expressed his thanks with a kiss to her hand. She had blushed and then smiled, weakly but sincerely, before turning her boat back towards Guldove.

Then Glenn learned that Serge had decided to lay siege to Anri village.

It was clear that something strange had occurred up in that tower: Serge was not himself, even Lynx had been acting bizarrely towards the end, and Kid's motivations had always clearly been in a different vein than that of the other players – something much more personal, and much less concerned with the greater good. Glenn wasn't sure who or what he was fighting for anymore – so he stopped.

Glenn was the hot-head, they said. Dario was the sensible one. Dario had been Glenn's compass. Dario would have pointed Glenn to the right person to follow.

But Dario wasn't here.

Glenn sat in his room and tried to ignore the drama that was happening on the other side of it. Marina, the other tenant, had unintentionally jilted the affections of two brothers, and Glenn, as usual, was outside the love triangle, only this time comfortably so, as opposed to the disaster that was everything Karsh and everything Riddel.

Glenn had still not made up his mind a couple days later, and was thinking about polishing his brother's winning tournament trophy. He could ask Zippa for some polish, and she would probably even give him a secret smile and a snack, a couple cookies or a bunch of grapes. Or he should probably run his customary drills in the yard, he didn't want his swordplay to get rusty.

It was a rather lazy afternoon, really.

The last thing Glenn expected was for Karsh to burst into his room (with Lynx of all people!) and start ribbing him about joining him on some adventure.

Karsh needed all the people he could find, and Glenn's reaction was a horrible mix of cold fury and sudden warmth.

 _After he leaves me stranded at Fort Dragonia… After what he did to my brother… After he ignores me for the sake of everything else under the sun, he has the gall to ask me for help!_

 _But he needs_ me _. He needs_ my _help._

Glenn doesn't know what he's fighting for, and Karsh isn't a compass like Dario, who can be trusted to tell him who and what to fight for. Karsh is even more hot-headed and impulsive than Glenn. Karsh would fight for thieves and murderers and villains, if that was where the wind blew him that day. But that's not the reason Glenn responds the way he does.

It's the idea of sudden power. Glenn is the one who is needed now, and Karsh is the one who has to deal with callous rejection.

"Sorry, Karsh… I need some time to think on my own."

Karsh blinks for a moment in surprise. Lynx- Serge… whoever it is that appears to be Lynx looks thoughtful and gives a silent nod. Glenn doesn't even bother to look at the third member of their party. He's waiting for the hurt look to cross Karsh's face, and then… something else. Something that would be nothing like admiration.

Karsh disappoints him without even trying.

"Heh, you're beginning to sound similar to your big bro!" He grins widely, lopsidedly, and ruffles Glenn's hair, throwing his headband out of the way.

They leave shortly after, and Glenn is left in their dust.

Karsh doesn't care about what he does, but that's just Karsh. Glenn's the one that somehow lets himself get hurt over and over again by the same thing.

Glenn doesn't want to be compared to his brother. Glenn doesn't want to be in third place to a memory, and he doesn't want to inherit his brother's relationship with Karsh.

 _Oh, so you'd rather be compared to Riddel?_

Glenn grabs his trophy – _runner-up_ – and heaves it across the room. It sounds loudly as it hits the wall just below the window.

Marina and the brothers jump, their feud apparently forgotten in the midst of the sudden outburst from the usually-calm-Glenn they're familiar with.

The embarrassment hits him all at once. He murmurs an apology and crosses the room to retrieve the trophy.

It's lucky he didn't break a hole in the window, or else he'd have to surrender his pride and ask Zippa for patching tools.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I tried to make it clear textually but, just to be safe, the number in parenthesis next to Glenn's name is his age at the time of the flashback. It's a feature for this chapter alone, since other chapters aren't likely to cover more than a year or two at once. We'll be going linearly from here on out.

Also I apologise in advance for the uneven chapter lengths. I like to tell myself the chapter divides are thematic.

* * *

 _Glenn (5)_

Glenn is five and he drags his practice sword out into the yard. The straw practice dummy stands waiting for him, glaring angrily down at him from on high.

His brother Dario is eleven, and Karsh is twelve, and they have long since graduated from the practice dummy, in fact, they would tear it to shreds if they went at it with their new equipment. They're standing over near the precipice above the canal and parrying blows with weapons forged not of wood and reeds, like Glenn's, but with hard, cold steel, fresh out of Zappa's forge. General Viper himself commissioned Dario's sword, in deference to their father, and as a reward for the hard work he put in practicing his swordsmanship.

Karsh's axe, on the other hand, had been an early birthday present from his parents. Zappa had beamed as he handed it to his son, directly after Dario had received his own weapon. Zippa had shaken her head, but once Karsh had turned around to swing the axe excitedly at an imaginary foe, she stood up straighter, crossed her arms, and smiled softly.

Karsh jumps out of the way of Dario's sword before ducking and swinging up at Dario's middle. Dario diverts the blow easily and swings back, as if they were dancing a well-planned dance, rather than trading potentially lethal blows. It is a precise science and, bewitching as it is to watch, neither of them has a moment to look back at Glenn standing in the yard.

That's fine though. Glenn had already vowed, watching the awe and the wonder in Karsh and Dario's faces as they received their new weapons, that he, too, would practice and practice as long as it took so that he, too, could get a brand new sword and sign up for tourneys and fight bad guys and spar with a _real_ sword, just like his brother. Glenn tells himself he's satisfied with the practice dummy for now, and turns back to attack it.

His sword is almost as big as he is, and he struggles to lift it over his head to swing at the practice dummy. He lands hit after hit after hit, trying his best to hold the sword steady over his head and pointing the blunt tip at the dummy's abdomen, which isn't as good as the dummy's neck, but…

He lifts the sword up again, but his elbows are buckling under the weight. He ignores it and strikes again, and again, until-

The sword swerves out of control, slipping out of his hands. His arms extend and-

His brother is suddenly there, and catches the sword before it falls on Glenn's head.

"Glenn, you can't overwork yourself like that," Dario says, leaning the sword against the fence.

The even tone of Dario's voice, absent of exasperation or frustration, makes Glenn feel ashamed. He wishes Dario would get angry instead. If Dario got angry, then Glenn could get angry too, and if they were both angry, the distance between them wouldn't be so large, and his brother so unreachable.

"Like I thought," Dario continues, "you're just too young for this kind of training. You'll just end up hurting yourself, Glenn."

Glenn pouts and he wants to argue, but when Dario gets like this, he can never be proven wrong.

"Aw, Dario, come off it- You're just wasting time with the kid so you can get extra rest before our next bout. Afraid you'll lose~? I'm raring to go already!"

Karsh is leaning over the fence and leering at Dario challengingly.

Dario sighs. "Karsh, whether you sympathise or not, my brother is going to get seriously injured if he keeps going the way he's going. Since he's too small to hold a sword properly, he needs to listen to me and get back inside."

"That is the biggest load of bull I've ever heard," Karsh declares. "I'll take care of this."

Karsh jumps over the fence and grabs Glenn's wooden sword. He swings it absently before holding it out for Glenn to take.

Glenn reaches for it tentatively, and then more assuredly as Karsh grabs his shoulder to steady him.

"Clearly you've got a good idea of the footwork, junior, but you know what your problem is?"

Glenn flushes at the compliment as he shakes his head. Karsh thinks his footwork is good. He can think of about a dozen problems with his form, but after that, none of them seem that important.

"You're problem – is that you need to put more weight into your swings. Do you know where your weight is?"

Glenn shakes his head again.

"It's down here," Karsh raps his knuckles on Glenn's chest. "Your shoulders. Your chest. Your core. Where it's _not_ is a metre above your head. Hold your weapon level to your chest and swing your whole body into the blow."

Karsh takes out his axe and demonstrates, turning his chest and shoulders into each attack as he drives the blunt end of his weapon against the strawman. He's pulling his blows, but the dummy shakes under the buffeting force anyhow, and bits of straw fly everywhere.

"Like that," Karsh says, standing and stepping back. "Now you go."

Glenn purses his lip. "But…"

He pauses.

"Out with it, kid. I ain't got all day."

"If I don't hold the sword up, I can't hit anywhere good on the dummy," Glenn admits moodily. "Like the stomach or the neck…"

Karsh looks at him, surprised, and then bursts out laughing. "Gods, listen to this kid, Dario! What're you teachin' him?! Who'd have thought the pipsqueak could be so bloodthirsty?"

"Like you've been any help at all with that," Dario snips moodily.

Karsh ignores him though, turning back to Glenn.

"Don't worry about that, kid." He ducks down to Glenn's height. "Until you're bigger, you want to hit for their knees," he declares, pointing at the tips of the stumpy legs on the dummy. "It won't kill 'em, but the knees are sensitive, so it'll hurt like hell. And once they fall down to your height…"

He lets Glenn's imagination fill in the rest.

Glenn nods briefly and turns back to his task. He follows Karsh's advice and aims his blow right for the dummy's knees.

"This is ridiculous," Dario says. "If he attacks like that, it'll leave his head completely vulnerable to an enemy attack. What if they just strike straight down, with superior reach?"

Concern and worry are radiating from him in waves.

"Dario," Karsh replies, "it's a bundle of straw." He then turns to Glenn and shouts, "And attack from the sides! Dance around their feet! Don't give them a clear opening to strike!"

Glenn nods and jumps to the left of the dummy to strike at the knees sideways.

"Karsh…" Dario starts.

Karsh swings his arm over his friend's shoulder. "Dario, I know why you're upset, after what happened with your dad and everything, but let the kid have some fun, okay?"

Dario falls silent again. Glenn doesn't glance away from his practice.

Karsh lets Dario lean on him a second longer before letting go of him and stepping forward to ruffle Glenn's hair.

"You too, junior. Don't let what happened with your dad get you down."

Glenn isn't.

He quickly swats Karsh's hand away and lunges at the strawman with his sword.

His father was always out on one expedition or another, and Glenn rarely saw him for more than a day between missions, many of which were months long. And then when he came home, to the shack they rented from the Smithy, all he ever seemed to do was tell Glenn what to do and confiscate his secret stash of day-old Viper Churros. Even if his father was gone for good now, after his trip to the Divine Dragon Falls, Glenn didn't see what difference it would make.

And Sir Radius had come by and promised to visit often and provide for Glenn and his brother. And Sir Radius was nice enough. At the very least, he wouldn't boss Glenn around as much.

* * *

 _Glenn (6)_

Zappa was a veritable giant and his wife Zippa was taller than even most men, her husband included, so it was no surprise to Glenn than Karsh was becoming taller and more burly by the day.

And all the good food didn't hurt either.

Lodging at the Smithy came with a meal a day included pro bono. With Glenn's parents both gone and Sir Radius away on missions more often than not, nobody was officially responsible for feeding him, but Zappa and Zippa made a valiant effort. It was no easy feat, but day in and day out, Zippa would have snacks for everybody waiting behind the front counter around noon, and Zappa would prepare a feast for five every evening, oftentimes more if Riddel or another friend was visiting.

Of course, Glenn did not know well enough to properly appreciate it back then. He wished Zippa's snacks included Viper Churros more often, and he had never quite trusted the fact that it was Karsh's _father_ who did the actual cooking around the house. (Zippa had her hands full keeping the accounts balanced and the shop clean.)

That night it was just the five of them: Karsh and his parents, and Glenn and his older brother. Zappa's cooking was far from delicate, but it was always hearty and flavourful. Tonight it was a large pot of boiled potatoes and seafood stew with a tomato base and fresh crab, straight out of the beautiful El Nido sea.

Zappa wasn't bothering with a soup tureen, and was hauling the stew pot directly up and onto the tablecloth, right in front of him at the head of the table. Zippa was sitting at his right side, with Karsh diagonally across from her, Dario across from him. Glenn took the opportunity to scramble up into the seat next to Karsh.

Glenn's shoulders were barely high enough to reach the table top when he sat straight in his seat, and his arms were angled awkwardly up instead of resting comfortably against the table. But he had made a big show of the fact that he was finally tall enough to eat at the big table without a pad under his seat to prop him up. He wasn't going to ask anybody for help now.

Karsh was chatting with his brother about possible entry into the Acacia Dragoons, completely unaware of the way Glenn watched entranced as his bulging arm muscles shifted as he easily reached over the table to stab at a potato with his fork. As soon as he had deposited it on his plate, he reached out again and again for another four potatoes which he piled together in front of him in a large heap.

Dario took pity on Glenn. Interrupting his conversation with Karsh, he stood to reach for Glenn's bowl and fill it with stew for him.

Glenn pouted. He had wanted to do it himself. He would have managed it. Somehow…

"Dario, you spoil that kid," Karsh said, shaking his head, and directing a lopsided grin at the two brothers.

"And you, Karsh? How many times have we all gone out of our way to spoil you?" Dario asked, as he passed one of the smaller potatoes over to Glenn.

Glenn looked up at Karsh, whose full attention had returned to Dario. Karsh could probably do everything all by himself. Glenn could already do a lot of things by himself, way more than half of the things. He could already swordfight, not as well as Karsh and Dario but, still, he could. And he got himself changed for bed every night. He could go to the vendor and buy lunch for himself. And he had even made friends all by himself: Joel and Felicia and Pete who were orphans and all played behind the docks. Glenn had even won at hide-n-seek. He had found everybody all by himself. Glenn was only half Karsh's size, so if Glenn could already do more than half the things on his own, when he grew to be as big and tall as Karsh it only made sense he would be able to do _everything_ by himself. Just like Karsh, and just like Dario. And then…

"Spoil _me_?! I don't accept favours from nobody!" Karsh laughed.

Zippa snorted.

"Aye, don't ye?" Zappa interrupted, he reached across the table to jostle Karsh's arm. "No one ever told me."

"Certainly," Dario smiled, sitting back down, "you don't accept favours from _nobody_ , so you must accept them from _everybody_."

"Hey, you know what I meant!" Karsh protested.

"Yes, and I'll just tell Miss Riddel to stop bringing you flowers, if you aren't accepting favours."

"Hey, don't do that! Jerks," Karsh pouted. "You believe me, right junior?" he asked, turning to Glenn.

"O- of course!" Glenn blurted out. "If it's Karsh, I'm sure you can do anything!"

Dario chuckled. "I'm not sure you quite understand the meaning of the word 'spoiled', Glenn."

Karsh guffawed triumphantly.

"Nah, the kid knows what he's talking about, Dario," he said proudly.

Glenn beamed up at Karsh.

"Here kid, have another potato," Karsh offered, giving Glenn one of the ones off of his own plate, before reaching across the table to stab a replacement with his fork. "If you eat all you vegetables, you'll grow up to be as great as I am, one day." He flexed his bicep as he pointed towards himself proudly. "Well, maybe not quite as great... I _am_ pretty great."

"So, you've got a soft spot too, Karsh." Dario snickered. "My brother has you all figured out. Flattery will get you everywhere."

"Aw, shaddap," Karsh said. "So, anyhow, General Viper was here the other day, and he told me that…"

Karsh turned away and continued chattering on about whatever it was General Viper had said.

Glenn frowned as they got lost in their own conversation, in their own little world. He grasped his silverware and struggled to carve into the potato. The piece he ended up with was large and lopsided, and he stuffed the whole thing in his mouth and ate it with gusto, following it up with a couple spoonfuls of stew.

One day he would grow up to be like Karsh and Dario and then- then they'd have to look his way all the time, the same way he looked up at them.

* * *

 _Glenn (9)_

Glenn was nine when the city of Termina turned one hundred.

With the Centennial Festival approaching, the whole port had been a fuss with preparations an entire month in advance. The innkeep had fully cleaned and aired out the rooms, as well as hung banners throughout the entire street. Vendors had been congregating along the promenade, setting up stalls and arguing over the best locations. Brightly blooming flowers had been planted in every available patch of dirt. The Statue Cleaner had been working extra-hard, polishing General Viper's statue to a glistening shine. And the ports were teeming with boats, carrying shipments of food, toys, building supplies, and, on one memorable occasion, a menagerie of trained circus animals and a collection of multi-coloured balloons.

And, now, the day was finally here. Termina was founded a hundred years ago today. It was a beautiful spring day, and out in the streets there were carnival games and treats and an entire parade with singers and dancers and drums and elephants!

But inside the wooden shack behind the Smithy, there was only a dimly lit lantern, a bucket of cold water, and Glenn.

This was not entirely true. Dario and Riddel were also there, but they were traitors so far as Glenn was concerned, traitors who had conspired to make the most exciting day of the century as boring as possible. Dario had come down with the spring flu not a day before, and was now lying in bed looking cough-y and wheezy and pale, and was _not_ taking Glenn to the Centennial Festival as planned. And Miss Riddel was sitting in a chair next to his bed, looking sad and concerned, feeding Dario spoonfuls of porridge or dabbing his head with a wet washcloth every so often, and _not_ taking Glenn to the Centennial Festival as planned.

"You poor thing," Riddel cooed softly.

Dario was breathing heavily as he struggled to pull his arm out from under the huge pile of blankets heaped over him.

"Oh, don't! You'll catch cold!" Miss Riddel pleaded, trying to pull the blankets back over him.

But then Dario's hand broke free from the tangle of sheets and reached out towards hers.

Riddel turned the same shade of crimson as Dario's fever-ridden face as she let her hand meet his halfway. There was a pause, and then they smiled shyly to one another. Miss Riddel lifted his hand up and touched it to her forehead, and then it back down on the bed. There - she seemed to be trying her best to wrap his arm back in the blankets without letting go of his hand.

Glenn was trying his best not to make hurling sounds.

"Are you feeling better now?!" he cried. "Can we go to the festival now?!"

Dario gave out a raspy sigh. Miss Riddel turned towards him. She frowned, her face caught somewhere between stern and sympathetic.

"Glenn, I understand that you're upset," Miss Riddel said, "but your brother isn't feeling well. In a couple hours, I can _try_ to make arrangements to have somebody else take you to the festival. But, in the meantime, please let your brother rest."

Glenn put on his best pouty face.

Miss Riddel sighed. "Don't you have any friends that are going to the festival?" she asked. "If any of them live just up the street from here, maybe you can ask their par-"

Riddel stopped talking immediately as Dario shifted in his bed. He closed his eyes and shook his head silently.

Glenn frowned immediately. He wasn't friends with any of the hoity-toity brats who lived on this street. Joel and Felicia and Pete were from the more… the more _something_ parts of town. There was no way Dario was letting him run through the crowds of tourists drawn to the city for the festival to find his friends, half of whom didn't have any parents anyhow. And besides…

"No," Glenn said shortly. "All my friends are already _at_ the festival. They've been there for _hours_ already. This day only comes once every hundred years, and we're missing it!" Glenn cried, trying to get through to his brother and Miss Riddel.

"Glenn," Riddel said softly, "that is not true. There will be many celebrations and many festivals in our lifetime, and many after it. But this day will not come ever again, even in another hundred years, just as it never was a hundred years in the past. Each and every day comes only a single time, so we must spend every day doing what we feel we must. And today, your brother is sick, and needs our help."

Glenn had the sinking feeling that Riddel was right. Her philosophical platitudes always _sounded_ like they were right at any rate. Even if they somehow managed to completely miss the point that there was a freaking _parade_ going on outside.

Riddel gripped Dario's hand tightly and continued. "And even if this day came a thousand times, I like to think that for each one of them I would chose to care for your brother."

Glenn may have failed to stop the start of a hurling sound that time. He had come to the distinct conclusion that love was dumb, if it made otherwise tolerable people like his brother and Miss Riddel think a fever and a runny nose were somehow _romantic_.

Glenn turned around to storm out the door.

Dario made a valiant effort to sit up in bed. "Glenn," he rasped out, his voice hoarse and bitter, "don't go running off by yourself! It's not safe!"

"Don't! You'll strain yourself!" Riddel worriedly tried to placate Dario.

Glenn threw the door open, fully intending to bolt out to the streets… if he could work up the gumption to ignore Dario's warnings.

He didn't get the chance to, though, because he ran directly into Karsh, who was standing in the doorway with his hand hovering where the doorknob would have been.

Glenn stepped back a little bit, eyes widening, startled by the coincidence.

Karsh gave him no more than a cursory glance, before brushing past and addressing the other occupants of the room.

"Yo! What's taking you guys so long?" Karsh asked. "I think the celebrating's already started."

Dario sighed again. It was a wheezy sort of sigh.

"I thought you had already left," Riddel said.

"Gah-ha-ha!" Karsh shrugged. "Since Mom and Dad were out early running deliveries, nobody woke me up," Karsh crossed his hands behind his head. "Whatever. You guys ready?"

"Dario's not feeling well," Riddel said curtly, "as you well know."

" _Still?_ " Karsh frowned.

Riddel brushed Dario's hair away from his burning forehead.

Nobody dignified Karsh's question with a response.

"It's only a cold," Karsh persisted. "This day only comes once every hundred years, so you can't miss it for a dumb reason like that."

"That's what I said," Glenn mumbled.

None of the others paid him any mind. Karsh's eyes remained firmly fixed on Miss Riddel.

"His fever's horrible. There's no way he can go out like this. What if it gets worse?"

Riddel looked at Dario with a tender worried expression, which Dario met with a weak smile. Dario's flu was not the only thing that was contagious, judging by the way the side of Riddel's lip curled upwards.

Karsh looked distinctly sickened by their display of lovey-doveyness, Glenn noticed.

Glenn smiled. Karsh was so cool. He must have come to the same conclusion as Glenn: that love was dumb and stupid. Miss Riddel and Dario had fallen to its insidious effects, but Karsh was immune, at least.

"Fine," Karsh said snippily, crossing his arms. "Dario has to stay because he's sick or whatever. But why aren't you coming to the festival, _Lady Riddel_?"

"I'm worried about my friend," Miss Riddel answered smoothly.

"It's just a cold. He'll be better in a few days if you leave him alone. Why ain't cha coming to the festival?"

Riddel sighed, and caught Glenn's eyes. "Glenn really wants to attend too. Why don't you take him with you instead?" she pleaded. "I'm sure he'd really appreciate it."

Glenn brightened. Karsh acted like he couldn't be bothered with looking after Glenn most of the time, but since Riddel suggested it… Maybe Karsh would be convinced.

He looked hopefully up at Karsh, who ignored him.

"C'mon, Riddel," Karsh cajoled. "They're giving out free food on the promenade. And there are games, and a race, and there's music, and probably they're gonna set out paper lanterns out in the harbour later. I heard there's even an elephant…"

"Karsh," Riddel said, attempting to smile, "I hope you have a good time at the festival, but please understand I wish to stay here and look after Dario."

Karsh ground his teeth together. "Fine," he bit out.

"Fine," Riddel agreed cheerfully.

Dario shifted under the blankets.

"Fine!" Karsh shouted. He grabbed Glenn roughly by the forearm and started to steer him out the door, still looking back at Riddel. "I'll go the Centennial Festival with junior, here. And- and Glenn and I are going to have so much fun without you, you'll- you'll regret it!"

Glenn beamed. He turned back to catch a glimpse of his brother's and Miss Riddel's faces, but he couldn't see anything before Karsh shoved him outside and slammed the door behind them.

This was so exciting. He was going to go to the festival! But he wasn't only going to the festival. He was going to the festival with a cool older friend! He really hoped he'd run into Joel and Pete now, just so he could rub it in their faces.

He reached into the pocket of his shorts and felt around for the folded triangle of paper he had stashed there earlier.

"Tch! What the hell is wrong with me?" Karsh muttered to himself, squatting down to the ground and burying his face in his hands. " _You'll regret it_? Could I have sounded any _more_ like an ass?"

Glenn unfolded the paper – once, twice… eight times, until he could read the scribbled words against the creases.

Karsh was still crouched down, with his face hidden from view.

Glenn peered down at him curiously. How long should he wait before saying something? Karsh seemed... upset… about something, but there was a parade to get to, so he really should…

"What's this?"

Karsh reached out and swiped the piece of paper from Glenn's hands, saving Glenn from having to make a decision. He rubbed at his eyes and forehead with one hand, as he held the paper up with the other.

"I've been practicing my letters," Glenn said, grinning brightly. "It's a lot easier to read, right?"

Karsh snorted. He squinted at the paper and snorted again. "' _Eat barbeque chicken. Buy caramel apples. Fried noodles…'_ " he read off from the paper. "The hell- It's like a restaurant advert," he grumbled.

"It's the list of things I want to do at the festival," Glenn replied. "There's other stuff further down," he said, pointing a couple lines lower at _'Scoop goldfish'_.

Karsh snorted a third time, scanning the list further.

Then he sighed and stood. "Well, I guess I can't back out now. If we're going to do all these things today, we better get moving."

.

The parade had started at the edge of the jungle, then marched up through the arches of the cities, circled around the larger streets and down the promenade, before making its way back to the docks. Karsh and Glenn had to run to catch the head of the procession just as it was coming into the finish line, so they would be able to see all the performers – the dancers, the animals, the people in their funny masks, the musicians blowing horns and striking chimes, and the Dragoons marching enthusiastically behind.

"Feh!" Karsh grumbled, tearing into some of the barbeque chicken that they had bought from one of the stalls nearby. "All the dancers are tired already. And that Qilin looks like it's about to go to sleep right in the middle of the street," he said, pointing at one of the giraffes. "And I can hardly see anything from here."

They were sitting at the edge of one of Termina's white stone terraces, a few stories above, and several hundred metres away from the parade line. Getting any closer was impossible. The crowd was impenetrable.

"What was even the point of coming so late?" Karsh said, through a mouthful of chicken. "You need to get a space right next to the action, right when it starts, before everyone decides to start half-assing their performance."

A dancer in red scarves was leading this next part of the parade. The rest of her troupe utterly failed to synchronise themselves as they copied the twirls and summersaults of their leader.

Glenn still thought it was the best thing he had ever seen. He scooted closer to Karsh and watched the parade, starry-eyed, and reached for another drumstick with greasy hands.

.

"What do you mean you're out of money, kid?"

Glenn shrugged, and looked guiltily down at the ground. The vendor had told him he couldn't afford a mask to paint – not for three Gold.

"The hell did you spend all your money on?!"

Glenn lifted up his purchases.

A caramel apple covered in nuts, and a green and red striped spinning top.

"What?! I thought you'd been saving up your allowance money for this," Karsh snorted. "How much did you pay for these anyhow?"

Glenn had saved up his allowance money. (He might have had a few slip-ups in the last couple months, though. Viper Churros were hard to resist.) He shrugged again, before offering up the answer.

"This was about seventy Gold," Glenn said, lifting the spinning top up. "And this," he lifted up the apple, "I dunno. I wasn't really paying attention."

"Ugh! That piece of crap isn't worth more than twenty Gold," Karsh groaned. "The vendors hike up all the prices for the tourists, y'know. You have to haggle them down! And what do you mean you weren't paying attention?!"

Glenn pocketed the spinning top defensively and didn't respond. He should have borrowed money from Dario before they left.

"I swear, this kid has no common sense," Karsh mumbled to himself. "Whole day… giant pain in my ass…" He stood up straight and looked over Glenn commandingly. "Fine, I'll spot you just this once," he said, "but that's it then! You're gonna have to forget about the rest of the stuff on your list!"

Glenn nodded glumly as Karsh dragged him by the hand to the front of the booth. He yelled angrily at the vendor until he got a "local's discount", and chose a cat-shaped mask without asking Glenn which template he wanted.

"You're not getting one for yourself?" Glenn asked.

Karsh frowned. "No, kid. Painting masks is kiddy stuff."

Glenn sat down at the bench next to the other festival goers – parents with their children – and gangs of teenagers joking to one another – each absorbed in their own worlds. Glenn looked at the broad wooden brushes, their bristles caked with paint, and the bright colours littering the pallet.

It really was his own fault that he didn't save enough money.

Karsh was standing at the booth entrance, facing the crowd outside with his arms crossed.

And Glenn never really wanted the cat-shaped mask in the first place.

With that in mind he reached for one of the brushes, red, and then blue, and then swirled them together.

Twenty minutes later, he had completed his masterpiece, the colours slathered unevenly on the mask's clay surface, transgressing beyond the visible barriers that were carved into the surface to designate the eyes and nose and whiskers. And it was the most oddly coloured cat Glenn had ever seen, purple with orange whiskers and blue eyes. It did match Karsh's colouring, though, more or less.

"Finally done?" Karsh asked, as Glenn walked up and tugged on his shirt.

Glenn nodded and held the mask out to him.

"What?" Karsh said in a bored voice. "Whaddaya want me to say kid? Good job painting and all?"

Glenn shook his head. "It's for you, since you bought it and all," Glenn said.

"What?! Why'd you even bother?" Karsh snorted and reached out to accept the mask.

He looked at it critically, one eyebrow twitching up.

"Looks pretty silly," he said.

Glenn frowned.

 _Karsh didn't like it after all._

"You don't have to-" he started quietly, looking away.

"Ya sure you don't want it, kid?" Karsh interrupted, with a sudden tremor in his voice.

Glenn looked back up at Karsh, who was staring at the mask with a conflicted expression.

"It's for you…" Glenn repeated.

Karsh lifted up the mask and slapped it on the side of his face, pulling the drawstrings tight.

"Damn, it's still wet on this side," he said, some orange paint clinging to his hand as he pulled it away.

He then grabbed Glenn's shoulder with that very same hand and pushed him back up towards the vendor.

"Troublemaker," Karsh growled, "I can't be the only one with a mask."

"Masks! All shapes and sizes! Paint them whatever colours you like! Seventy-five Gold!" the vendor shouted, as they pushed their way up to the counter.

"Ripoff!" Karsh shouted back. "Local discount!" he reminded.

The vendor's face turned sour at Karsh's reappearance, but Karsh wasn't paying attention, as he shoved forty Gold on the counter.

"You want a cat-shaped one too, kid, or…?"

Glenn bit back a smile and pointed at a demon mask with pointed horns.

.

Karsh might have actually dragged them home after that, if Glenn hadn't seen the goldfish scooping at the next booth over.

 _Only Two Gold a Go Fish for Goldfish!_ the sign advertised.

"I still have enough for that!" Glenn said excitedly, dashing forward, his newly painted red demon mask tied to the back of his head.

"Yeah, yeah," Karsh replied, lagging behind after him.

There were twelve fish tanks side-by-side, arranged in groups of two to allow for competitions.

Glenn's two Gold was accepted eagerly in exchange for a paper goldfish scoop, and he managed to catch one goldfish before the scoop broke apart in the water.

"Not bad for a first try," the woman behind the fish tanks said, as she poured the fish into a plastic bag. "Care to go again?"

"Not bad?!" Karsh said indignantly, startling Glenn. "They totally beat you over there!"

He pointed at the group of patrons at the tank across from them. Glenn hadn't paid attention to them at all while scooping, but the vendor behind their tank was bagging up three whole goldfish for them.

"Go again!" Karsh commanded, whipping some coins out of his pocket. "And beat them this time!"

In the next five rounds, Glenn managed to get one, two, one, three, and two goldfish, and then none on his sixth round. The group of competitors on the fish tank next to theirs changed three separate times, and Glenn hadn't beaten any of them.

"Argh!" Karsh growled. "Budge over!"

Glenn scooted over, and Karsh bent down over the fish tank, staring at the goldfish, as if trying to intimidate them. He accepted his own paper scoop in exchange for another two Gold.

And then he immediately plunged it too deep into the water and broke it.

"Argh!" Karsh yelled again, and demanded another scoop.

"You have to skim it quickly just under the surface," Glenn advised. "Try flicking the edge."

But then Karsh had glared at him with a wild look in his eye and Glenn decided it was better to stay quiet.

Karsh went through no less than ten scoops without catching as single fish.

"Fine!" he shouted, throwing his latest destroyed scoop on the ground. "This one right here," he said, pointing at the girl who had just approached the tank next to theirs, "she's fresh meat."

The girl, who couldn't have been more than six-years-old, accepted a scoop from the vendor in blissful ignorance of the drama Karsh was stirring up.

"You can take her! Win for the team! Win for us all!"

He tossed two more Gold at the vendor and shoved the scoop into Glenn's hand with a squeeze.

Glenn took the scoop, wondering how this had become so serious, and watched the goldfish intently.

It… well… It wasn't really a close game, but Glenn managed to scoop up a second goldfish at the last moment before the paper broke apart. (The girl next to them hadn't managed to get any.)

"YES! YES! Gah-ha-ha-ha!" Karsh shouted hysterically, as Glenn laughed nervously and the vendor, smiling, packed all twelve of their goldfish in a glass jar.

Karsh was still laughing, puffing his chest out as they walked away, further along the promenade. And Glenn smiled down at the goldfish.

"That was actually kind of fun," Karsh said, sounding almost startled by his own words. "Hey, kid, you wanted to go get fried noodles too, right?"

.

"So which do you want?" Karsh asked. "The sky lantern? Or the boat lantern?"

Glenn looked anxiously at the growing lines for each stall, on opposite ends of the street. The paper lanterns were a big attraction for wrapping up the festival, right before the fireworks started.

"It's too noisy!" Karsh complained. "I can't hear you."

He bent down to Glenn's height.

"So which do you want?"

Glenn let his eyes dart between the stalls before leaning forward to speak in Karsh's ear.

"Both."

"Greedy!" Karsh laughed. But he was grinning heartily, so Glenn took it as a good sign.

It was dark by the time they pushed through both lines to get the lanterns.

They headed to the docks to release the lanterns.

Karsh held up his fist and focused his energy slowly, and pretty soon the fire gathered, lighting the candles inside the lanterns.

Karsh's innate element wasn't even red, and he could still summon fire so easily.

(But then Dario could use most of the elements too.)

(And Riddel could use all six without any trouble, although her skill with white elementals outshone all the others.)

"Here," Karsh said, handing the sky lantern to Glenn.

Glenn held it out as far as he could, off the pier and slowly released it into the sky.

Next to him, everybody else was also releasing lanterns, and his quickly got lost in the others that hovered gently upwards into the wind.

Karsh called his elementals again, green this time, like Glenn, and a wind blew up to carry the lanterns away.

They let the boat lantern out on the water next, and Karsh held onto the back of Glenn's shirt so he wouldn't fall into the water after the lantern.

"That everything on your list then?" Karsh asked, walking back into the city.

Glenn pulled out the crumpled list in his pocket.

They had seen the sculpture exhibit. They had found a musician who was willing to let Glenn try playing his banjo. They had met a group of acrobats, who had swung Glenn up into the air. They had run into Glenn's friends and played an impromptu game of Mercy before losing each other again. They had seen 'El Nido's Most Ferocious Monster' and 'El Nido's Largest Artichoke'. They had seen magic card tricks and participated in a foot race.

They had done almost everything, really.

"It's just the fireworks and… one other thing," Glenn said.

Karsh peered curiously at the list, at the one item that had conspicuously not been smudged out.

 _Ride an elephant._

"Yeah, they wouldn't let us near those parade animals. I guess they were all tired out from walkin' so long," Karsh said, crossing his arms behind his head and looking contemplatively up at the sky.

Glenn hummed in agreement and pocketed the list.

They settled by General Viper's statue to see the fireworks. Night blooming flowers had been planted in patches around the General's feet, and the view over the bay was impressive.

Unfortunately, everybody else also thought it was a great place to view the fireworks from.

"They're about to start," a voice hissed, as the crowd closed in around them.

 _"_ _Look over there!"_

 _"_ _They're setting them off from the boats, right?!"_

 _"_ _Even though the lanterns are still floating around?"_

"There!" Karsh said, pointing up somewhere that Glenn couldn't see.

The crowd had surrounded them completely, towering over Glenn, and blocking his view of the sky.

Glenn heard a bang, and a fizzle. Then another bang, and another, in perfect rhythm.

The crowd gasped at the show.

Karsh was gaping idly at the sky.

"I can't see anything," Glenn muttered, standing on his tiptoes.

It took a moment for Karsh to peel his eyes down to Earth.

"What was that?" he asked, bending down again.

"I can't see!" Glenn said, louder this time.

There were two more bangs in the distance.

Karsh seemed to be looking through him.

"C'mon, get up here, kid."

"Wha-"

That was all Glenn got to say before Karsh wrapped his right arm around Glenn's waist and threw him over his shoulder.

"What're you-?" Glenn sputtered out.

"Well, it's a shame to not get everything on your list, after we've gotten so far. And, well, compared to an elephant, I'm the next best thing." He paused for a moment. "Actually, scratch that. I'm way better than an elephant. Ya better be grateful."

Glenn grabbed onto the shirt on Karsh's back and swung sideways, trying to keep from falling.

Karsh seemed to be trying to push Glenn's legs onto his shoulders, on either side of his neck, but without actually being able to look back at what he was doing.

The result was a walking disaster zone. Glenn felt the back of his head collide with one of the someone's back, one of his feet kicked at someone's arm, and Karsh leaned forward, trying to rebalance himself, and ran into several other festival goers.

" _Excuse me!_ " Glenn heard an indignant voice cry, as he tried to grasp onto Karsh's bicep.

"Yo!" Karsh replied. "You're excused."

"Karsh, I'm too old for this," Glenn protested, when Karsh finally managed to grab Glenn's legs and pull him up onto his shoulders properly. They were still swaying a little, but Glenn wrapped his legs around Karsh's neck and grabbed onto the top of his head, and there was time to let his vision readjust.

"Too old?" Karsh snorted. "Have you seen yourself, pipsqueak? You'll be just fine up there. And anyhow, you said you couldn't see anything from down below."

"'m not a pipsqueak," Glenn grumbled.

He wasn't. But he was still shorter than Felicia and Pete. And his brother had been taller when he was Glenn's age.

 _Stupid Dario._

"Well then, I'm just super strong, so I can still carry you no problem," Karsh said.

Then Karsh turned his head to try to look up at Glenn and flashed a brilliant smile.

"Just relax, junior. How's the view up there?"

Glenn felt his cheeks colour. He tightened his legs around Karsh and gripped the crown of his head harder before looking up at the night sky and down at the sea.

Over the heads of the crowd hundreds of lanterns still riddled the sky and the water, dancing bright white against the black night. And he could finally see the fireworks properly, bursting in bright red and orange bursts and falling down into smoke, just before the next one lit up the sky.

It was a warm night, already growing humid in preparation for the coming summer, but Glenn shifted closer to rest his torso on the back of Karsh's head.

"It's beautiful," he said, gazing up at the heavens.

* * *

 _Glenn (11)_

Up at the front counter

"That boy," Zippa huffed, a half-smile dancing on her face. "He's a good boy – strong and kind. But ah know he's not the most proper. Ah wish he wouldn't go carryin' that 'illustration book' around everywhere he goes."

Back towards the forge

"Aye. Never bothers me, unless he wants somethin'. New axe! More paper! More ink! More charcoal! Never ends," Zappa scowled.

In the walkway in front of the canal

"Karsh's sketchbook?" Riddel blinked and smiled down at Glenn.

There was an unnaturally long pause.

"Well, there are some things we're better off not knowing." Riddel smiled even more brightly, "And everybody has a thing or two they want to keep private. Even Karsh."

In their room in the shack behind the Smithy

Dario sighed.

He clasped Glenn on the shoulder. "Listen, Glenn, Karsh is the best friend I could ask for, but… he's not the most mature, in many ways… I'd keep out of his sketchpad. You're not really old enough to be looking at that kind of thing anyway."

.

Glenn might have let the subject drop before that but with those few words Dario had effectively made it a challenge. Who was he to decide what Glenn was and wasn't old enough for, anyway? Glenn knew he was very worldly and mature for his age, no matter how much everyone else told him what a hot-tempered little troublemaker he was.

It was a simple matter really. Karsh always seemed to carry his sketchpad around with him, except when he went to the public bathes with Dario. So, obviously, the solution was to decline an invitation to go with them (Glenn hated the humid interior of the bathes anyhow), wait until they left, and then sneak into Karsh's room to sneak a peek at the sketchbook.

It was so ingenious, it went off without a hitch.

Glenn turned the handle on the back door into Karsh's room carefully, and let the soft pads of his feet carry him quietly to Karsh's bedside.

The shelf next to his bed didn't have many books on it. There were a couple of newspaper clippings in a folder, a stack of pens in a jar and a bottle of ink, and a whetstone for sharpening the blade of his axe.

And next to them, propped against the side of the shelf, next to a couple of battered old ones, was Karsh's most recent sketchbook.

Glenn gently pried it off the shelf, and sat cross-legged with his back against Karsh's bed. He spared a quick moment to run his fingers across the edge of the paper, before eagerly folding back the cover of the sketchbook.

Then, he turned the page. And turned the page again.

He frowned slightly, and wrinkled his brow in confusion. He hadn't known exactly what to expect, but…

The pages were filled with images of women. Some had short hair and other's long. Some of them lay together in the same image, and some were distinct. One had a robe pulled over one breast and a contrite expression. Most were unclothed, though, with their faces contorted in strange expressions, and many of them had their legs spread apart, or their rears tilted upwards facing the viewer.

They didn't seem ugly but, were not _precisely_ beautiful either.

Glenn scratched at his eyebrow in confusion, as he flipped to another page. Was that what women looked like _down there_?

Glenn had, when he was younger, agreed to remove his pants and show his friend Felicia what boys had, if she would do the same for him. They had both thought it very interesting and funny, but Glenn didn't remember it leaving much of an impression. He looked more carefully at Karsh's drawings. He certainly didn't remember _down there_ being quite so… _big_?

 _Textured_? _Engorged_?

Glenn flipped through a couple more pages which, by in large, all contained similar images.

But then, a scrap of paper fell out of the sketchbook with the next turn of the page, and Glenn had to turn his attention away to pick it up.

It was something that must have been ripped out of a magazine, or a book. A small drawing of General Viper.

Or, at least, Glenn thought it was General Viper. The man looked much younger than the General that Glenn was familiar with. He had a full head of coarse dark hair, and a young and handsome face, turned halfway to the front and directing a confident and stately gaze to an unknown recipient. Glenn would have not recognized the youth for General Viper, had he not been wearing his customary black coat and uniform. At his belt was his famous sabre, the Viper's Venom, and in his hand he held a banner, streaming behind him with the Acacia Dragoons coat of arms.

Glenn then turned to the sketchbook. Karsh had painstakingly recreated the image. No, not recreated. He had improved it, so far as Glenn was concerned. The amount of texture and detail that had been drawn into the General's outfit was astounding. Each fold of the cloth was rendered precisely. Each button on his coat was given a distinct pattern. The banner waving behind him seemed larger and more life-like, with crest shining brightly and each thread woven into the tapestry crisp and distinct. And the General's expression, it seemed more true, more confident, and more handsome than it had been in the original.

Glenn felt his face heat up. For the first time since he opened the sketchbook, he considered that he might be intruding, sticking his nose into a very personal and private thing.

And yet he couldn't look away, or bring himself to look even further in the sketchbook.

What if there were drawings of Riddel further in the pages? What if there were drawings of Dario, or of himself? Would they be rendered with the same loving attention to detail as the image of General Viper? Did Glenn want them to be? Was it even his place to know?

He settled for continuing to admire the picture of the young General, brought his fingers to the edge of the page and felt the scratches of the pen and the charcoal shading and tried to get lost in that feeling.

Then the door to the bedroom slammed open.

Glenn startled.

Was it Zappa or Zippa? Or had Glenn really sat there so long staring at Karsh's drawings? Maybe Karsh had forgotten his towel?

He quickly flipped back to the pictures of the naked women. Somehow that felt less embarrassing.

Glenn heard the footsteps rap in quick succession against the floor and then stop.

Glenn looked up.

Karsh was standing over him, throwing a shadow over Glenn, who was sitting on the floor, cornered between the bed and the shelf and – oh Gods, Karsh was going to be upset. Glenn hurried to try and apologise.

But something stopped him.

Karsh did not look bothered or upset at all. In fact, he was grinning, wider than Glenn had ever seen him grin before.

"So, looking through my sketchbook, huh?" Karsh leered.

"Er, yes," Glenn said, in as small a voice as he could, and blushing furiously. "I'm sorry, I'll just… put this back…"

Glenn hurried to stand, to close the book and replace it on the shelf.

"What's the rush?" Karsh said, interrupting Glenn with a hand on his shoulder. He grabbed the sketchbook out of Glenn's hand and shrugged lazily. "After you went through all the trouble of sneaking into my room while I was gone… you may as well enjoy it."

Karsh dropped to the floor, sitting cross-legged, and pulled Glenn (who was really too big for this kind of thing) up to sit on his left knee.

Glenn was suddenly very aware of the way Karsh's leg felt, pressed up under him. He tried to squeeze his own legs shut, to ease the… awareness.

"Lil' Glenn's finally discovering the wonders of the world," Karsh sighed contentedly. He wrapped his arms around in a circle, trapping Glenn between him and the sketchbook, and flipped it open so they could both see the pictures inside.

Karsh's left leg jiggled slightly, from the motion, or maybe out of restlessness. Glenn shifted his weight where he was sitting slightly. It felt… something. Glenn wished Karsh would stop it.

"So, which one's your type?" Karsh asked easily, flipping through the sketches. "I'm partial to long hair, personally, but I really like how this one came out," he said, pointing to a girl with short hair, who was reclining on some surface and spreading her privates open with both hands.

Glenn's eyes glossed over the picture, and then scanned the room, eyes darting between north and south exits on either side of the room. He felt himself push down slightly against Karsh's knee.

"Ah, but," Karsh said grinning as he flipped through a couple more pages, "this one with the big chest is good too. Top-heavy. And if they're flexible enough, you can grab ahold while you're doing other things, yanno?"

And then it wasn't _only_ Karsh's leg, Glenn realised. Karsh's left arm was also pressed nonchalantly against his, encircling him and jostling slightly as Karsh turned the pages in the book. And a couple of strands of Karsh's hair had brushed against his neck a moment ago while he sat down. And it was Karsh's room, which would have understandably smelled of Karsh, even if Karsh hadn't been sitting there right behind him.

"Or maybe this girl's the best one," Karsh said, indicating the one on the next page. She's modelled after a real person, actually. Although, I guess you're too young to meet her, for another five years at least."

Glenn gulped and felt a surge of thick wetness pool at his groin. The feeling of relief was warm and euphoric.

Followed by a sickening plunge into self-consciousness.

That had happened before. It had! It wasn't that strange, Glenn thought.

But somehow it was different. Before, it had seemed like happenstance, coincidence. But this…

This, by comparison, seemed very consequential. It hadn't just happened. It happened while Karsh had been here, sitting with him.

Because Karsh had been sitting here with him.

And to Glenn's utter mortification, Karsh seemed to notice. He paused in perusing the sketchbook, and turned to Glenn, who watched as Karsh looked him up and down, eyes eventually resting at his crotch.

Karsh closed the sketchbook and dropped his hands. He turned away, biting his lip, and started trembling with unvoiced laughter.

It was clearly not possible to die of embarrassment, because if it had been, Glenn would have died that very moment.

Karsh broke into snickers when he finally spoke.

"What a kid!" he said, tears of laughter beading in the corners of his eyes as he turned to Glenn. "Here ya go!" he said, pushing Glenn off his leg. "Go clean yourself up! And don't worry, okay? It happens to the best of us when we're young."

Glenn steadied himself on his feet, feeling uncomfortable and miserable, and started heading to the door at Karsh's request.

"And junior," Karsh stopped him before Glenn could open door.

Glenn stopped without turning around, so as not to expose the tears that were springing to his eyes involuntarily.

"You can borrow my sketchbooks anytime you like," Karsh said mirthfully.

Glenn nodded slowly, still facing the door, and fled.

It was only a short distance across the yard from Karsh's room to the shack he shared with his brother, but Glenn was still relieved when he didn't run into anybody on the way back.

Dario still wasn't back from the baths, or from seeing Miss Riddel, or from doing whatever else Dario got up to in his spare time. That was also a relief. Glenn pulled off his shoes and shorts and underwear and throws them in a heap in his closet. He quickly wiped the tears away from his eyes with his arm, before he climbed up on his bed and crawled under his blankets, pulling them up over his head.

He pressed his face against his pillow and willed his cheeks to stop burning. His entire face felt like it was about to catch on fire.

He lay there for at least an hour, drifting into and out of sleep, trying to forget what happened, or remembering and feeling ashamed for no good reason.

That's why he knew what to say by the time Dario returned.

"I'm back," Dario called, as he opened the door to the shack.

The hairs on the back of Glenn's neck stood on end.

Dario was going through the motions, Glenn could tell. From safely under his mound of blankets, Glenn could hear all the sounds Dario usually made when he got home: footsteps, the springs on the bed contracting as Dario set something on it, a sigh, Dario struggling to remove his shoes, the click-clack as Dario finds the water pitcher and lifts it off the table and then puts it back down.

It seemed to take an eternity. By the time Dario sat down, next to the lump that was Glenn buried under a pile of blankets in his bed, Glenn had drifted off again.

"Everything okay, Glenn?"

Glenn's eyes snapped open. There was a pause, before the frenzy renewed itself in Glenn's mind.

"Glenn?"

"H-how do you feel?" Glenn asked. "About Miss Riddel?"

"Miss Riddel?" Dario repeated.

He paused for a moment, and Glenn could almost hear him weighing the words. It's no secret that Dario and Riddel like each other, enough so that all the adults whisper behind their backs about matches and destiny and heaven. But even though Glenn knew what it meant, he didn't know what it _meant_. And Dario was careful. Dario never shared his feelings about Riddel. He was careful.

"I suppose… I like her very much," Dario decided. "I want for Miss Riddel to be safe and happy and content, for all times. And I'll watch over her for as long as I am able – to make sure she is."

Dario looked off to the side, to somewhere Glenn could not see, and frowned.

Then the moment was gone, and Dario looked back to Glenn.

"Does that answer your question?"

It didn't. Not really.

"I mean… I know you like her. But do you… _feel_ … anything when you're with her? Does it feel different than with other people? Different than with other people like…"

 _…_ _like Karsh_ , Glenn thought, although he couldn't bring himself to say it.

" _Feel?_ " Dario asked.

"Yeah," Glenn confirmed. "Like you're not really doing anything. But then, suddenly your body starts _feeling_ stuff."

Glenn peeked his head out from under the sheets, and turned to look at Dario, face burning and willing him to understand.

There was a pause.

"Oh, jeez, where is Radius when I need him?" Dario turned away and muttered to himself.

Glenn withdrew his head back under the pillows.

"No, wait," Dario said. He heaved a sigh and then, "A- aye, I know what you're talking about," he replied tentatively.

Glenn did not respond.

"Glenn, I- I want you to know that whatever you're feeling… it is completely normal for boys your age. And whatever… reactions you are having… those are also completely normal," Dario said.

Glenn didn't respond.

"Are you okay, Glenn?" Dario asked.

Glenn nodded from underneath the blankets.

Dario took this as a good sign and patted his brother on the back through he blankets.

"Mm, thanks," Glenn said.

"I'll let you rest for now," Dario said, "but I'll have Radius talk to you about it the next time he drops by. Whatever you're feeling is normal, but you must always remember that no matter what you're feeling, you must always treat a lady with dignity and respect."

Glenn hummed in agreement, wondering exactly how ladies factored into it, or Karsh, and what about that picture of the General, and Dario had only mentioned the first, and what exactly _did_ Dario feel for Riddel, and why was Glenn so hesitant to ask about any of it?

Dario stood. "And you can always talk to me and the others if you need to," he said, although he sounded unsure. Even when Karsh and I leave for Viper Manor, you can always send me letters, and I'll come visit on the weekends as often as I can."

Glenn nodded again, but Dario kept talking without noticing.

"Don't worry, we'll work everything out," he said.

* * *

AN: In case you missed it, because it probably won't come up again, Karsh's first boy-crush was on General Viper. How embarrassin', having your first boy-crush be the father of your girl-crush! Karsh himself probably missed this detail about himself though, so it's only me feeling second hand embarrassment for him.


	3. Chapter 3

_Karsh is going to be crushed._

That's the first thought that Glenn has, standing out behind the shack where he and his brother grew up, the afternoon sun shining in his face.

It's not the right thought to be having at the moment though, so his immediate instinct is to qualify it. That becomes his second thought.

 _We all knew it was coming, so Karsh doesn't have a right to feel slighted now._

Glenn's third thought is that he should probably say something. His next thought he finally vocalises.

"C- congratulations!" he sputters out.

So that's it. It takes four whole thoughts before Glenn can finally congratulate his brother and Miss Riddel on their engagement. It's not that he's being insincere. It's just not the first thing that springs to mind.

Glenn's not too proud of himself for that.

Neither Dario nor Miss Riddel seem to mind though.

His brother smiles that bashful smile, the one that looks like it shouldn't belong on a man of Dario's stature, and looks down at the ground.

Miss Riddel beams at Glenn.

The two of them sway a little in their gestures, in motion with the other. They're standing only a few centimetres apart, but they're not holding hands, not touching at all. His brother and Miss Riddel have never been given to displays of their affection. Rather, they don't need to display it actively. It radiates out from them when they are near one another. Just standing next to each other, they are sweet and good.

 _A perfect matched set._

The thought is somehow uninspiring. Glenn realises his eyes have glazed over, and makes a concerted effort to smile, to bring himself back into the lovers' joy.

"We were thinking about a spring wedding," Miss Riddel says, the words falling from her mouth like notes to a song.

"An excellent idea," Glenn agrees. "It will be quite an event."

Riddel's smile is sympathetic. "We were thinking of a small ceremony."

"Like I told Karsh," Dario says, "I hope to hold the wedding here, where we have so many wonderful memories together."

"You've told Karsh already then," Glenn says.

"Aye," Dario says, and Glenn can just barely make out the way his brother's eyebrow twitches with worry.

"Yes, we wanted to tell all the people most important to us as soon as possible," Riddel says. "That's why we've come to you Glenn. We already have daddy's blessing. And Karsh's, as well. In fact, he insists on filling the entire yard with bellflowers for our wedding."

Riddel glances briefly at Dario, and Glenn's eyes follow. His face has relaxes visibly at the reminder of Karsh's promise.

"And you, Glenn?" Miss Riddel asks. "Will you give me your blessing, to marry your brother and look after him, for as long as I am able?"

Glenn's flustered for a second. Miss Riddel makes it sound like his opinion is actually important.

The sun is hot on his face, and he can feel the sweat condensing on his forehead.

It's a brief moment before he thinks of how to respond.

He bows down low, and reaches for Miss Riddel's left hand, raising it to his chapped lips. "Of course, Miss Riddel," he says. "Thank you for caring for my brother, as serious and stubborn as he is."

"Oh, Glenn," Riddel says, sounding halfway between delight and exasperation. She urges him to stand. "There's no need to be so formal. We're going to be family, after all."

Glenn thinks on that a second, and then steps forward to offer a kiss on her cheek instead.

Riddel giggles shortly and wraps her arms around his shoulders.

"Hey, hey!" Dario says, smiling. "I've had more than enough competition to deal with for Miss Riddel's hand. The last thing I need is you making any last minute bids."

For a moment Dario's ribbing is well received, but then Riddel stiffens in Glenn's arms, and Dario's smile dies on his face.

In some ways it's true. Miss Riddel is considered a great beauty by most people's standards and, as the General's only child and the heiress to Viper Manor, she's had offers from more suitors than Glenn would care to count.

But Dario had been steadfastly unconcerned with the various lords vying for Miss Riddel's affections. In fact, there's really only one other suitor of Riddel's that Dario concerns himself over.

Glenn doesn't want to be the one to point out the elephant in the room though, so instead he rolls with Dario's original joke.

He swings Riddel off his chest and drapes an arm over her shoulder, facing Dario challengingly.

"Well, Miss Riddel is so lovely, it's no wonder you've had so many adversaries try to steal her away. Shall we spar, to see who's deserving of the good lady's hand?"

Glenn fakes a battle stance, although his arm is still hanging idly over Miss Riddel's shoulder, and his sword is lying several metres away, against the wooden exterior of the shack.

Dario laughs and Miss Riddel smiles coyly, both eager to take Glenn's redirection at face value.

"Aye! We'll have to spar over this later," Dario agrees, good-naturedly.

Riddel laughs and lifts Glenn's arm off her shoulder.

"Is that any way to treat your future sister-in-law?" she teases.

Glenn shakes his head at the ground, smiling, and grabs her left hand again, holds it up, and changes the subject.

"No ring?" he asks. "Has this no-good brother of mine failed to propose to you properly."

Dario snorts. "I figured we would just stick to wedding bands."

"His proposal was wonderful," Riddel interjects. She reclaims her hand from Glenn and reaches back to pull at the gold chain encircling her neck. The pendant she pulls out of her dress is also gold, with a deep blue inlay. "Your brother presented me with this when he proposed."

Glenn squints. The necklace, he can't quite place it, but...

"Oh! I completely forgot!" Riddel starts. "This pendant belonged to _your_ mother as well! If it bothers you, I won't wear it in front of you. Should I return it to you? It is a family heirloom after all…"

 _Ah, so that's why it looked familiar._

Glenn looks to Dario, who's facing pointedly away.

Dario always was a little possessive, where the memory of their mother is concerned. But Glenn was only a few months old when she passed, so he doesn't feel the need to be particularly bothered by it.

Riddel is looking at him worriedly.

It's easy for Glenn to forget, with the cheerful way Miss Riddel goes on about the General, but Riddel is without her mother as well. Karsh is the only one of them allowed the carelessness of having two parents to fawn over him.

"Yes," Glenn says, "it's a family heirloom. As you said, we'll be family soon. So who better to have it than you, Miss Riddel."

Miss Riddel begins to tear up, and gives him a grateful look.

Glenn turns to Dario, who meets his eyes this time.

"Well, that's taken care of then," Dario says. "We'll make the announcement to Zappa and Zippa over dinner tonight. And then we'll send word to Radius, and a few others."

"I bet Karsh has already told Zippa," Glenn says. "I saw Zappa pull some of his special brew out of the cellar earlier."

Glenn had also heard Karsh shout out that he was going to be out late on his way out the door, and not to expect him back for supper. Glenn doesn't have to wonder why now.

"Special brew? It truly is a blessed time," Miss Riddel says, "and with you finally joining the Acacia Dragoons!"

Glenn laughs nervously.

"I hope we aren't overshadowing your accomplishment with the announcement of our engagement," Dario says.

"It's not really much of an accomplishment," Glenn replies. It didn't seem all that special when he was joining the Dragoons six years after Dario and Karsh had.

"Nonsense," Miss Riddel says. "To be accepted at such a young age, almost a full year younger than your brother when enlisted… You're very talented, Glenn."

"And we know how much work you put into your training," Dario says. "Even now that you've been accepted, you're still working hard and training out here, every day."

Glenn feels his face heating up and raises his hand to cover it. He's about to deny that it was hard work at all, but Dario speaks first.

"How about this, we'll have a celebration for your entry into the corps, separate from all this engagement stuff. We can go celebrate at one of the taverns in town, and we'll bring presents and everything. And –and Karsh will come too, of course!"

Miss Riddel nods enthusiastically. "Yes, I'm sure Karsh will enjoy that," she agrees, before turning to Glenn. "He'll probably get really excited and gather up a bunch of girls to come sit on your lap and pour you drinks."

"He doesn't have to do that," Glenn protests, glancing sideways. "No, none of you have to do any of this."

"Of course we don't _have_ to," Dario grins. "But we want you to feel welcome. We've all seen too little of you, since we started working for General Viper. And Karsh and I have had far too little time on leave, since we were promoted to Devas. It will be great, seeing you around the manor, Glenn."

Glenn smiles to himself.

 _Well,_ presents _don't sound too bad._

"If you insist," Glenn says.

Riddel beams and clasps his hand comfortingly.

"It's settled then," Dario agrees. "It will be a bit belated, but we'll set the plans to go out and celebrate as soon as I get back from the Isle of the Damned."

.

.

It's not as if dealing with Karsh had ever been easy.

Glenn's feelings for Karsh don't change. Or they change so slowly that Glenn doesn't realise it. He can't say when he started thinking of it as love, it blended so seamlessly into whatever he thought about Karsh before then.

Then Karsh kills Dario.

Malice? Jealousy? Self-defence? Dark magic? Some mixture of all of that and more, Glenn surmises from Karsh's tortured conversations with himself, conducted in too-loud whispers.

Glenn's feelings for Karsh don't change, but…

December nineteenth. Glenn is seventeen years old.

…he stops calling it love in his head after that.

.

.

Radius was weeping openly, sitting on Dario's old bed in the shack he had shared with Glenn all throughout their childhood.

Glenn sat across from him on his own bed. He wanted to do something to stem Radius' tears. He had always been fond of the man, who had always had a kind word and a pat on the head for Glenn, who visited to deliver clean clothes and morsels made of fruit paste, who trained them in swordsmanship, who had sent his soldier's wages to feed them, after their father had died.

But what could he say? What could he do? Glenn could no more bring back the dead than any of them.

Glenn turned almost instinctually to his closet, where he hid the tournament trophy he had won, almost six years ago now.

"Glenn, you are the last that's left of us now," Radius had sniffed, wiping the tears from his eyes.

Radius seemed very small in that moment. Glenn remembered him standing over them, his body drawn up stiffly and firmly in a warrior's posture, as he displayed the proper form that Dario and Glenn were to aspire to. Glenn had to wonder silently when Radius had turned into such a small old man.

"Come here, Glenn, I have something for you." Radius beckoned him over.

Glenn stood and crossed the room, and paused slightly before taking a seat next to Radius.

Something about sitting on Dario's bed felt wrong. Glenn had never done so while Dario was living there. It was always Dario crossing the room to make sure that Glenn was okay.

Radius pulled something out of his white robes and offered it to Glenn.

Glenn took it in his hand and looked at it curiously.

It was a small mirror with a golden frame and a couple frayed tassels hanging off each side.

Glenn looked into it and saw himself staring back. A cross shaped scar sat on his left cheek, as it had for as long as Glenn could remember. He still had no idea how he had gotten it.

"I should have given it to Dario," Radius said mournfully. "It would have helped him on the Isle of the Damned. Your father, Garai, always used to say the mirror showed a person's true heart, their true path, when they were lost in the dark. I'm such a fool. I knew they were heading for that accursed island. He and Karsh probably just tried to power their way through the entire thing. I should have left him this keepsake, to help guide him the right way."

Glenn flipped the mirror around in his palm. It looked utterly ordinary.

"My father…" Glenn started. Radius always liked it when he mentioned his father. "Thank you for giving this to me," he finished, although privately he wasn't sure.

Radius circled one arm around Glenn's back and gave him what could only be described as half a hug.

...

That night, while Radius slept, Glenn snuck down to Dario's gravesite. There hadn't been a body to recover, but Dario's name had been carved below their father's on the gravestone, and Karsh had retrieved Dario's Einlanzer and placed it at the grave himself during the funeral procession. The ceremony had been large, so large that more than a few people had to stand in the canal itself, if they wished to attend. The people of Termina all seemed to want to pay their respect to the fallen warrior, and entire platoons from the Acacia Dragoons had stood solemnly to the side, as others talked of Dario's bravery and justness.

There was barely anybody out by the graves, not at this time of night, not this far from the main streets of Termina where the inns and restaurants and brothels would have left their lanterns out to light the way. It was a moonless night, and Glenn could barely see as he let his feet carry him through the city, navigating through alleys and corridors, up and down stairs by memory alone.

Which is why it wasn't completely unexpected when Glenn ran headfirst into someone.

That someone was a giant. Larger than Zippa and Zappa combined. And they grabbed Glenn under his arms and lifted him up to get a better look.

"And who might you be, amigo?"

Glenn blinked and his eyes adjusted in the darkness. It was a man, at least two metres in height, with shining dark eyes. He had a strange face, and it took Glenn a moment to realise he was wearing a mask.

"Sí, I recognise you," the man said. His voice was smooth and sonorant, not deep or gruff the way Glenn would have expected from someone of his stature. "You were here the other day. The brother, el hermano, of the recently departed knight."

Glenn nodded, and then wondered, too late, if the man could even see him nod in this darkness.

The man continued, regardless. "I am Greco, the grave keeper here. I do not normally allow visitors at this time of night, as so many late-night visitors turn out to be grave robbers…"

Glenn had wondered on the wisdom of leaving a weapon as valuable and irreplaceable as the Einlanzer sitting atop his brother's grave. It seemed his worries were unfounded though, if a man this intimidating was keeping watch over the graves.

"…but you, amigo, who have only just lost that which is dear to you. You, who means to guide these pour souls back into the light... I will allow you to proceed."

Glenn nodded again, as the grave keeper, Greco, set him back down to his feet. The man turned, his robes whipping around behind him, and walked off into the night.

And then Glenn proceeded on alone. He followed the twisted path to his brother's grave slowly, testing the ground with his feet before moving forward, so that he did not slip and fall into the water.

Eventually, though, Glenn made it to his destination, where the Einlanzer stood, surrounded by flowers that had been left by well-wishers.

He crouched down to the ground, and began to dig. A hole, with a diameter no larger than his fist, dug as deeply as he dared. He had no wish to disrupt his father's remains.

Eventually he stopped and pulled the mirror that Radius had given him, his father's keepsake, from under his belt.

"Radius had meant it for you," Glenn whispered, placing the mirror down into the hole, facing upwards.

Glenn closed his eyes and prayed. Prayed that, wherever his brother was, he would not be lost. That light would guide his path. That whatever evil had taken hold on the Isle of the Damned would not hold him. That Radius' gift would reach him. He prayed for the brother, who had looked after him all these years.

And then Glenn opened his eyes again, and pushed the uprooted soil back into the hole. Then, just for a moment, he thought he saw the moon reflected in the mirror, before he covered it completely with dirt. He looked up at the pitch black sky, absent of stars, or any of the other celestial bodies and, reassured, turned back to work, refilling the hole he had dug, until the ground around the grave was level once more.

It was over three years before Glenn would find out that his prayers had been answered that evening, albeit not in his own world.

.

.

Riddel's eyes weren't red.

Well, no more red than they always were. Riddel's irises had always been a deep blood red. Being the heiress of the White Cobra left a number of strange physical marks on someone, apparently.

But her eyes weren't swollen and puffy at any rate, which was more than could be said of Karsh nowadays.

Not that Glenn had seen more of Karsh than was strictly necessary. They had both stayed at the Smithy for the funeral procession, but they were avoiding one another. How could Glenn not avoid him, after what he had heard Karsh mutter into the canal?

No matter.

The morning, two days after Glenn's midnight trip to the burial grounds, there had been a knock at the door. When Glenn answered, there was Riddel with her deep red and un-puffy eyes.

They didn't say anything for a while, just stood there in the doorway, Riddel looking up at him as he looked down at her. When had he started looking down at Riddel? She really was a tiny wisp of a thing. Why hadn't he noticed it before?

Then Riddel stepped forward and embraced him, her delicate fingers clutching his shoulders like a vice.

"I'm sorry," she said. "In my grief, I forgot… I know you're hurting too."

And Glenn lifted his right arm to return the hug and buried his eyes in her shoulder, as if he were a child again.

"You're returning to the manor tomorrow, right?" Riddel asked, although she had probably reviewed and approved the Dragoons' shift list herself, and already knew the answer. "Come. Put your armour on. Let's go gather some bellflowers in Fossil Valley. For today."

Glenn didn't feel like going much of anywhere. But as he pulled back away from her slight form, he remembered this wasn't the Riddel he had grown up with. This Riddel was shorter than he was, and Dario wasn't accompanying her to protect her, so someone had to.

"Just give me fifteen minutes."

He regrets it, though, fifteen minutes later when he walks out into the yard, his armour flat against his chest and his sword strapped to his belt, and finds that Riddel is not the only one waiting for him.

Riddel and Karsh were in the corner of the yard, leaning against perpendicular stretches of the fence, with their feet almost touching.

Karsh had his arms crossed and was uncharacteristically quiet as Glenn approached.

 _Yo!_ Glenn filled in the missing greeting mentally, before cursing himself for allowing such a pedestrian thought about Karsh, after everything that had happened.

"Ah, you're ready then?" Riddel smiled, although Glenn could see her lip quavering in the corner. "Let us be off." She pushed off the fence and strode toward the walkway down into the city.

Any hope that Karsh wasn't going with them died when he fell into step from a safe distance behind Riddel.

Glenn paused for a moment, before hurrying to catch up. He couldn't back out now, but he wouldn't have accepted Riddel's invitation, if he had known she already had a bodyguard to protect her.

The entire walk to Fossil Valley occurred in complete silence. Riddel had always been quiet and soft-spoken, and she offered no comments, except for an occasional indication when she pointed out an interesting bird, or other novelty on their walk. Karsh, who was loud and brash and probably would have offered to catch and cage said bird for Riddel's favour on any other day, only grunted in response. And even in the city streets, where crowds of people were bustling about like usual, a hush descended over the populace as people recognized Riddel, and offered small bows and nods of sympathy.

It was a miserably uncomfortable walk, and Glenn could not get what Karsh had said out of his head – about Dario and the animosity born out of the Masamune, if not of their own feelings.

Glenn was almost relieved when they were attacked by a pack of dingoes and an angry dodo bird. They were no real threat, even Riddel by herself probably could have held them off with her magic, but Glenn took vindictive pleasure in running ahead to slash angrily at them with his sword, blood spilling neatly on the canyon floor.

But as just as soon as that relief came, it was snatched away again.

Karsh hadn't run forward to compete for the kills, as he usually would have, and Riddel…

"I think this one's the mother, and the others – her children," she said, looking over the still canine bodies, lying prone and bleeding in the dirt. "She's larger than the others."

Riddel bent down and turned it on its back, revealing the teats on its abdomen.

"They're vicious beasts, Miss Riddel. They would have attacked us, had I not struck them down. What else should I have done?" Glenn said, defensively.

Riddel rolled the beast back over on its stomach and stood. She brought her hands together as if in prayer. "Nothing else. I never meant that you did anything wrong, Glenn," she said softly. "Only that it was a shame for it to have happened this way."

Riddel's expression was unreadable and, suddenly, Glenn felt the tremendous urge to strike her across the face.

But then the moment passed, and Glenn was left feeling with only the sickening feeling of guilt settling in his stomach.

"Come, Miss Riddel, I'll help you climb the valley wall," Glenn offered, in penance for his thoughts. He held out a hand and directed Riddel forward to the cliff face.

Karsh not only did not object to Glenn taking her hand, he didn't make any effort to help her climb up to the outcropping, nor did he attempt to look up Riddel's dress as she climbed.

It was absolutely infuriating! Although Glenn could not think of any reason why.

When Glenn had finished climbing to the top of the canyon, and finished pulling Miss Riddel up after him, he was suddenly reminded of the reason they had come. The small plateau around the dragon's skull was filled with intermittent patches of brightly blooming bellflowers. Riddel gave a contented sigh at the flowers before something else caught her attention.

"Glenn, look at the view!" she said, turning around to look across the valley. "It's such a clear day. You can see Anri Village there. And I think that's Gaea's Navel further out in the distance. Isn't it beautiful, Glenn?"

It truly was a gorgeous view, with the entirety of El Nido spread out in front of them. In one direction, as Riddel had indicated, were the colourful rooftops in Anri and Gaea's Navel almost, but not completely, lost in the misty cloud cover. In the other direction, were the jagged peaks that surrounded Fort Dragonia.

"Yes, a wonderful view, Miss Riddel," Glenn agreed, throwing a contemptuous look down at Karsh, who was still struggling to scale the cliff face.

Riddel, perceptive as always, noticed, and took the opportunity to bend down and offer her hand to Karsh, as he drew nearer to the top.

Karsh, tactless as always, batted her hand away softly and rooted his palm on the flat ground at the top of the canyon. With a groan and one last heave of his muscles, he finally succeeded in pulling himself up the last few centimetres and rolled up onto the grass.

Riddel took it in good grace and smiled at him before standing again.

"It took us longer to get here than I thought it would," she admitted. "We should get to gathering flowers, so that we can start heading back to Termina before sundown." She pointed to a small patch of blossoms on the opposite end the field, across the dragon's twisting vertebrae. "I'm going to start picking over there. Why don't you two begin on this bunch right here?" she indicated a large patch of flowers only a couple metres away, and didn't bother waiting for an answer. "We need a big bouquet for Dario. And some more for Zappa and Zippa's house. And I'd like to bring some home to Daddy as well. And do you think Radius would like some, Glenn? We'll get him some too," she finished before skipping across the field.

Glenn frowned and shot another look at Karsh, which went unreturned as Karsh wandered away. He chose a spot as far away from Glenn as the flower patch allowed, and bent down to start picking.

Glenn followed after him, squatted down on the other end of the flower patch, and for a long time they worked in silence.

Glenn reached into his pocket to retrieve a bandana he had carried with him, which he unfolded and set carefully out on the ground. He laid the flower stems out in the cloth, piled like logs, with each facing the same direction. Karsh was throwing his own picks every which way in a haphazard and ever-expanding heap, no doubt leaving Miss Riddel the dubious pleasure of trying to later rearrange them into something carriable. Although – Glenn glanced over to the other side of the field, where Riddel was sitting – perhaps it was warranted. Riddel did not seem half so occupied gathering flowers as she did staring out mournfully over the horizon. Glenn bit his lip and turned all of his attention back to the bellflowers, hoping to get lost in the task.

Karsh, as usual, ruined this plan. They both circled the work area, slowly and tentatively at first, but Karsh was moving more quickly, pulling at the flowers up by their stems roughly and tossing them carelessly to the side. It wasn't long before he had circled around to the spot Glenn was working at, uprooting bellflower after bellflower until he reached out to pick one right next to Glenn.

Glenn was quicker though. He shot out his hand and angrily swiped the flower away before Karsh could grab it.

Glenn instantly felt a dampness spread over his hand, as the bellflower was crushed beneath his grip, releasing purple pigment all over his glove. He cursed to himself and threw the crushed flower aside, even more angrily.

 _Useless._

"What the hell are you even doing here?" Karsh asked. His voice was low and quiet, with none of the lightness that Glenn was accustomed to.

Glenn turned to meet his eyes, but Karsh was still not looking at him. Glenn followed Karsh's eyes down to the blueish stain that had been left on his glove.

An angry tremor built in Karsh's voice as he spoke. "For the first time, Riddel asks me, _me,_ to come with her to pick bellflowers. Me. Just me. Without Dario. But," Karsh snorts out a short laugh, "you have to come along and ruin it, don't you?

"It can't just be me and Riddel, can it? It has to be you, and Dario, and the entire fucking world! Everyone, _everyone,_ else. I'm the one that's supposed to be there for her, not _you!_ " Karsh spit out with so much venom that Glenn could scarcely believe it was Karsh who was talking (and that it's him who's staying silent). "God's damn it, it's- it's never me and I- I-"

Karsh abruptly stopped speaking.

He turned his head into his chest and collapsed in on himself, curling into a form much smaller than a grown man of his size should reasonably be able to fit into.

"And I hate myself," Karsh finished emptily. "I'm such a jackass."

Karsh was leaning sideways, tipping over until his head was leaning against Glenn's shoulder. And they sat there, squatting, and looking over the emptiness that was personified by a patch of bellflowers.

"What am I even doing here?" Karsh asked. "There's nothing I can do for Riddel. Or you. There's nothing I can do for you either."

Glenn exhaled deeply. He wished it was true. He wished there was nothing Karsh could do for him, but it's too hard to pretend. Karsh's hair is brushing against his shoulder, and the heavy weight leaning into his side is steadying, for all that it threatens to topple him.

Karsh had been angry, and Glenn had been angry too. And then Karsh had all but yelled at him, and where had all of Glenn's anger gone?

"Hey, can you do me a favour? Can you take these over to Riddel?" Karsh asked, gesturing at his pile of picked bellflowers with one hand. "I just- I just can't. I'm not doing her any favours. I don't know how to- I can't."

Karsh was still not looking at Glenn. And Glenn couldn't look at Karsh either, because he didn't want to know if Karsh had started crying.

Instead, Glenn looked straight ahead. The sun had dropped down far enough on the horizon that it was burning a fiery red behind the dragon's skeleton, long dead and laying, sinking, into the ground. Probably, back when it was still alive, it burned the horizon red all by itself.

"Alright," Glenn agreed simply. But he didn't rise to gather the flowers for Miss Riddel. He bent down further and rearranged his legs under him so he was sitting cross-legged on the cool grass. Karsh didn't stop leaning on him, even when Glenns shoulder jerked downwards suddenly with the movement.

Miss Riddel didn't need them to deliver flowers to her. And she didn't need confirmation on the things she had probably already guessed about Dario's death.

In front of them the horizon burned, and above them the stars and the newly waxing moon had already begun to sketch themselves onto the pale blue sky with little white lines.

And Glenn sat there with Karsh leaning against his shoulder for as long as he could, until Riddel crossed back over the field and reminded them they better start heading back.


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Trigger warning for the last scene in this chapter. Some unnamed characters make some very creepy and sexually inappropriate comments about a prepubescent girl. Most of the characters aren't speaking seriously, which… doesn't really make it better. Some are speaking seriously, which makes it much, much worse. And Glenn just kind of… shrugs it off, which is addressed more next chapter.

Allowing little girls to join a local militia is perhaps the worst idea ever, just saying.

* * *

.

General Viper routinely holds conferences in the mess hall. It boosts morale, or so the General says.

Glenn's wasn't so sure about that, though. It seemed like that nothing could possibly boost morale, now that Dario was gone. And Glenn wasn't just speaking for himself – his brother was pretty universally adored among the Dragoons.

Although, if there was anything that could boost morale, Glenn supposed, it was the kind of missions the General was handing out.

Replanting the manor garden. Helping the postmaster deliver letters in Termina. Surveying nearby islands. Easy stuff, relaxing even. The General had been pretty lenient with them as of late.

It would probably be back to digging irrigation ditches and having uncomfortable encounters with the Porre military in a few weeks, but still.

"Sir Glenn," the General said gruffly, catching Glenn's eyes over a pair of reading glasses and nodding, "and Sir Daven will be given a boat to survey Water Dragon Isle."

Glenn nodded back, although General Viper looked back to the list before he saw it. He continued to hand out assignments to the other Dragoons, as Glenn looked around the mess hall.

The hall was dimly lit, and the tables were scrubbed clean. Towards the front of the room the General stood, with the Devas sitting in a row on his left side. Zoah had his helmet on, but his head bobbed occasionally, as if he were nodding off. Marcy was picking at something with her finger nails. And Karsh was sitting with his arms crossed, looking in all directions at no one. There was an empty space right next to Karsh, left vacant in respect to Dario, and occasionally Karsh would reach out and run his fingers along the grain of wood of the table, in front of Dario's seat.

Glenn's attention was elsewhere, though. He scanned rows of other soldiers, looking for someone trying to meet his eyes. He had only been an official member of the Dragoons for a couple weeks now, and hadn't yet learned who Daven was.

Not that extra time would have necessarily helped. Glenn wasn't particularly good at recognising faces.

Nobody looked his way, though. Their attention should, in theory at least, be focused towards the front of the room while the General was speaking. Whoever this Daven was, he was more professional than Glenn.

General Viper's voice sped up, the way Glenn had discovered it usually did as he came to the end of his speech, and Glenn reluctantly turned back to the front of the room.

"Sirs Van and Marilius will be on reconnaissance with Sir Karsh. And Francis is to report to Orcha for kitchen duty. Further details about your assignments will be delivered by your commanding officers. Are there any questions?"

Francis groaned, but seemed more or less resigned to his task. It was Van and Marilius who gave each other a weary look, before raising their hands.

General Viper looked up from his list and nodded in their direction.

"Speak," he said succinctly.

Van elected to speak for both of them. "Well, we were just concerned," he said, nodding in Marilius' direction, "about the er… _safety risk_ on our mission."

Glenn frowned.

General Viper readjusted his glasses and flipped through his reports. He did not look up as he responded in a bored voice. "The mission will be carried out in a territory long established to be under our control. According to our current projections, we don't predict any complications or security threats. I doubt you and Sir Marilius will encounter more than a few dingo pups and, should they prove to be vicious for you," the General intoned sardonically, "Sir Karsh is an excellent fighter who can no doubt take care of it."

There was an ominous pause as General Viper shuffled through the papers in his hands.

It's a non-answer, and everyone knows it.

 _Grandmaster Dario was the best warrior in the Dragoons. Was he really defeated by a mere beast? …just how long, exactly, were he and Sir Karsh "_ friends _"?_

Glenn had heard the rumours that had started circulating during the past week. And his silence on the matter has probably been more damning than most of the vile swill people said.

 _And Karsh's own silence_ , Glenn thought, stealing a glance at Karsh, who was sitting off to the side next to Zoah, leaning back in his seat and staring at the ceiling. _This is where he would usually laugh and call the other soldiers cowards, and then brag about his own skill in battle. Anybody can tell he's acting suspiciously._

Van seemed a bit put out by the General's response, but Marilius persisted in his place. "That… that is precisely where our concern lies, sir," he offered, looking at the General with a quiet resolve.

General Viper sighed and removed his reading glasses.

"Speak plainly," he prodded.

Marilius steeled himself before continuing. "We believe that Sir Karsh's… _questionable_ character is a threat to the safety of the other officer-"

" _Hold your tongue!_ "

The objection came from an unexpected quarter.

Miss Riddel, who had been sitting to her father's right, rarely spoke during meetings. In fact, it was easy to forget she was sitting there at all. Her slim figure seemed to fade into the background most of the time, as everybody lay absorbed in discussions of tactical manoeuvres, and the responsibilities of their assigned duties.

Now, though, it was hard to imagine how anybody might have missed her. As she stood up, her petite figure seemed to fill the entire room, and she was toting a glare worthy of the heiress of the white cobra. The reds of her eyes seemed to project outward, causing everyone in the room to cower like trapped mice.

"I will _personally_ see you discharged if you continue to behave so unscrupulously," she warned. "The vile rumours about Sir Karsh and the events at the Isle of the Damned are just that – rumours."

Riddel fixed a look on Karsh, as if she were daring him to contradict her.

As if she wouldn't believe him if he did.

Riddel turned away, satisfied at Karsh's silence, and returned to addressing the rest of the room. "I can personally attest to the fact that there is no truth to them. And I will _not_ tolerate you, sirs Van and Marilius, nor anybody else spreading them. You will carry out your mission as assigned, _with the team you have been assigned_ , and there shall be no further discussion about it!"

Everybody in the room looked chastened, save for the Devas and Glenn himself. Karsh himself was still staring at the ceiling, but Glenn thought he saw his edge of his mouth wobble in dismay.

Miss Riddel favoured the room with one last look of disappointment and sat back down.

General Viper looked appraisingly at his daughter, proudly even, and then turned to look at the rest of the room with disinterest. "If there is nothing else, meeting adjourned."

Everyone left the room quickly, and without chattering loudly amongst themselves for once.

People did not expect Dario's fiancé, of all people, to speak on Karsh's behalf. Riddel's good appraisal would almost be enough to silence Karsh's doubters, _almost_.

But the futility of Miss Riddel's gesture fell second to its meaning.

Zoah had apparently woken up and was attempting to drag a sulking Karsh out of his seat and back to his room.

Riddel's eyes were calm now, as she walked up to them with a mild smile, but earlier…

It was the moment Glenn knew it was love. Riddel's eyes had been overflowing with it.

Miss Riddel might never love Karsh in the way he wanted, but she loved him all the same.

Zoah finally succeeded in pulling Karsh out of his seat, and Karsh tumbled down to the floor.

Riddel caught Glenn's eyes across the mess hall and blinked at him (she had never learned how to wink properly) before smiling.

Glenn waved before turning away quickly and exiting with the other soldiers.

Miss Riddel might never love Karsh the way he wanted, but it was possible that Karsh would decide that the way she loved him was enough.

Karsh would certainly prefer that to the way Glenn felt about him... however Glenn felt about him.

And however Glenn felt about him, it certainly didn't include speaking on his behalf in a crowded hall of soldiers. Was it because he knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Karsh was Dario's killer, and Miss Riddel did not? Or even if Miss Riddel had known, would she have spoken up for Karsh, like Glenn never could?

Somebody tapped on Glenn's shoulder.

"Are you Glenn?"

Glenn, relieved to have a distraction, pulled away from his thoughts.

"Yes," Glenn exhaled. "You are… Sir Daven, correct?" he asked, turning to the soldier. A couple years more mature in the face, but about the same height, and with unremarkable brown hair.

"Yes," the man smiled. "You're the junior officer coming with me, then – to survey Water Dragon Isle and bring supplies to the fairies?"

"Yes," Glenn agreed, reaching out to shake Sir Daven's hand.

"I hope we can work together well," Sir Daven said, taking Glenn's hand firmly. "It's going to be at least a week's travel time to get there and back."

.

.

One week later; on an uncharted island between Water Dragon Isle and Anri Village

.

"We're going to die," Sir Daven moaned.

"We're not going to die!" Glenn snapped angrily for what seemed like the thousandth time.

Glenn's words didn't seem to reach him though. Sir Daven was once again descending into a fit of panic and despair.

"We're going to be stuck here forever," Sir Daven groaned pitifully, gesturing at the surrounding jungle. "We're never going to see Termina or Viper Manor again! Our boat's destroyed, we're all wet- We're going to die of hypothermia! And even if we don't, we'll starve, or die of thirst, stranded here on this godforsaken island."

Sir Daven was clearly the most overdramatic, pathetic piece-of-shit excuse for a man that Glenn had ever met –and he had met that ridiculous fop Pierre, who Zippa was renting Karsh's vacant room to, so that was saying a lot.

Okay, that might have been overly harsh, Glenn allowed, but it had not been a good day. Or a good year, actually…

"I never kissed her goodbye," Daven whispered, far too loudly to actually be a whisper. "We're going to die, and I never even kissed her goodbye."

"With all due respect, _sir_ ," Glenn gritted out, in a parody of deference to Daven's seniority in the corps (Gods knew how he was admitted to the Dragoons in the first place, let alone been promoted so that he ranked higher than Glenn) – "With all due respect, in the El Nido sea, one should expect the occasional squall. Our boat is not badly damaged, and I have repeatedly assured you that I know how to patch it, and will navigate us home once the storm breaks. In the meantime, we have at least a week's worth of food and water in the form of the fruit trees around the island," he said, pointing to the coconut tree that Daven had chosen to curl up underneath. "And, lastly, we will not die of hypothermia, because _I_ am making a fire. _Right!_ _Now_!"

Glenn glared angrily at Daven, who stubbornly refused to look at the fire pit that Glenn had spent the last hour digging and filling with foliage and branches. Daven curled in on himself further, and showed no initiative to help Glenn, who was hovering over the pit on his knees, trying to get the fire to light.

Glenn scowled and struck his two pieces of flint together violently.

Glenn had remembered to bring flint, thankfully, even if he had stupidly forgotten to bring any red elementals.

Sparks flew in all directions, but all of them died before igniting the leaves and wood waiting in the pit.

Glenn hit the flint together harder, rubbing his hands raw in the process. It was several minutes before the fire took hold. During this time, Daven had, fortunately, graduated from listing all the reasons they were doomed and the things he would never get to do, and had, unfortunately, started on the complete list of friends and family he would never see again, and who would dearly miss him.

"…my second cousins, Belladonna and Carlos, and the rest of the troops: Van, and Marcus, and Ralph, and…"

Glenn needed to get away.

"I'm going to see if I can find anymore… dry wood," Glenn said gesturing to the fire, which had started, but was still weaker than he would have liked. "I'll- Right back," he said, pushing through some trees and hanging vines on the edge of camp and pointedly ignoring Sir Daven's startled cry of protest.

He fled out of the trees and onto the beach, near where he pulled their boat up onto the sand. He stayed far away from the water, where tall waves cascaded against the sand in rapid succession. The wind and water whipped angrily in his face and the sound of the world shifting around him was almost deafening. He tried to clear his thoughts, let himself be distracted by the turbulence in full swing outside the safety provided by the canopy of trees.

It was too late, though. Glenn was already thinking of the handful of people who he wasn't sure would miss him- who he wasn't sure he wanted missing him, now that he knew how much missing somebody could hurt.

It wasn't like people cared for him the way they had all cared for Dario, though.

Riddel and Radius were case in point. They would both miss him, but it would be about missing Dario, more than it would be about missing Glenn in his own rite.

General Viper would miss having him to send out on missions, but on a person level, probably not. And the rest of his colleagues in the Dragoons- he had only just joined the corps, but he didn't really get on with any of them, so far. He was younger than almost all of them, and ranked the same, or even lower than the average soldier. But at the same time he exceeded almost all of them in practical skill, and was a personal acquaintance of the General's daughter. The situation was awkward, to say the least.

And in Termina, Zippa and Zappa might spare him a thought from time to time, but no more than that. And the children he used to play with in the alleyways and canals, Joel and Pete and Felicia, they had drifted apart from them at some point. He hadn't thought about them in forever, so he couldn't expect more than that from them.

And Karsh…

Karsh was the one he could judge least of all. He wasn't sure if he even wanted to know if Karsh would miss him.

He stayed on the beach for as long as he could manage, staring up past the storm clouds at stars he couldn't see, until he had to admit that he really _would_ get hypothermia, if he didn't retreat back into the jungle, to the campfire.

He stomped back through the jungle, trying not to get too frustrated by the vines everywhere trying to trip him up or the endless hordes of insects. Instead he gets frustrated trying to pull at the tangled cords holding his breastplate in place. It's soaking wet, and the goddamn thing just won't come off.

"Glenn?! Sir Glenn?!" he heard Sir Daven shouting, alerting every beast in the area to their location, no doubt.

Walking into camp, Glenn finally managed to pull the breastplate off, and he promptly threw it down to his feet.

"Sir Glenn!" Daven shouted in relief. He had been wandering along the far end of camp and shouting off into the jungle in the opposite direction, but now that he had caught sight of Glenn, he was walking quickly back over towards the fire.

Glenn pulled off his tunic too, leaving him in only a thin undershirt. He wrung the water out of the tunic before laying it by the dying fire. Glenn cursed, looking at the fire sputter weakly. he had completely forgotten to search for dry firewood. He'd have to make do with whatever was close to camp for now, and looked around to see if there was any salvageable vegetation to burn.

He had little to no warning before Sir Daven was upon him and all but tackled him to the ground.

Glenn quickly shifted his weight and reached for his sword. Sir Daven was clearly not in a clear state of mind and, for all Glenn knew, desperation might have made Daven turn against him.

His sword was halfway out of its sheath before something in Daven's eyes made him stop.

"Wha-" Glenn gaped.

That moment was all it took for Daven to succeed in pushing him the rest of the way to the ground.

"Sir Glenn! Thank goodness you're still okay!" Daven said, eyes half-crazed, and teary, and full of fear, and also a… _heat_ , of some kind…

"Sir Daven-" Glenn replied, trying to get a feel for the situation.

Daven decidedly made things clearer, though, as he pried Glenn's legs to either side and laid his entire body flush between them.

"Sir Glenn," Daven said, sputtering frantically and looking at Glenn hopefully, "I didn't want to- I don't want to die without…"

Glenn gulps as he feels the full weight of the man between his legs and his own body responding, as if Daven were not a hysterical idiot, but any other man.

Because in the end, Daven was a man, like any other man, hysterical idiocy aside.

And, well, Glenn had thought about it before. He had slept in the building neighbouring Karsh's room for the better part of his adolescence. And when he vacated the Smithy, he had shared bunks in the soldiers quarters next to dozens of other men.

The thoughts were inevitable, but there had been too much room for things to go very wrong if he acted on any of it. So he hadn't.

But he had never expected an opportunity like this to just fall across his lap, quite literally.

So Glenn figured he might as well take it.

 _I don't want to die without doing it, either_ , Glenn replied in his head.

In reality, though, Daven wasn't worth the effort of a verbal response, so instead Glenn just wrapped one of his legs around Daven's back and pulled him closer.

.

.

The next day found Glenn on the beach, trying to pull the remains of his boat together, and scowling.

The hull had been damaged more than Glenn had realised when they ran aground yesterday night, and the tree sap he was using to patch the holes was only going so far. Glenn wasn't sure it would be buoyant enough to set sail in, let alone reach Anri. Maybe he should tie a couple of logs to the side of the boat, turn it into a raft hybrid.

But that would require another day or two of work, and the effort of cutting down trees, maybe even weaving together extra rope. And he'd be doing all the work himself, probably, because Daven was proving to be as useless as ever.

So apparently sex did not automatically make somebody more tolerable.

Not to mention it went a long way towards Glenn waking up on the jungle floor with a tree root jabbing into his lower back, a splitting headache, and his arms and legs covered in mosquito bites.

The fire he had worked so hard to build had gone out sometime during the night, extinguished by rain that had slipped through the jungle canopy and pooled at the bottom of the fire pit. And all his clothes were still soaking wet.

Not to mention he had impulsively surrendered a quality piece of blackmail material to Daven.

 _Faaaantastic,_

There was no way he was going to be stuck on this island with Daven for any longer than was strictly necessary.

…It wasn't as if the boat had to make it all the way back to Viper Manor, after all. They just had to make it to Anri, and they could continue the rest of the way on foot. And if the boat started sinking when they were only halfway there…

Glenn indulged the idea of tossing Daven overboard to lighten the load. It certainly would solve all his problems at once.

But of course he couldn't actually do that.

If he was with someone less excitable, they could dispose of their armour and equipment and swim the rest of the way to Anri. But Daven was liable to forget how to swim and drag Glenn down with him, if he even knew how to swim in the first place.

And, well, if Glenn was honest with himself, he didn't know exactly how far Anri was from here, and he couldn't reliably swim more than a kilometre or two, if the boat could even make it that close to the mainland.

And if they ran into another storm…

Glenn scratched at the mosquito bites on his bare legs angrily before he set back to work smearing tree sap over the bottom of the boat.

He just had to make sure it could make the journey to Anri, and then he could figure the rest of it out.

It turned out the boat didn't have to make it that far though. Just around dusk, after Glenn had decided he did need to retrofit their boat as a raft after all, and right as Glenn finally managed to whittle away at the trunk of a palm tree with his sword (which was now probably more blunt than a butter knife), he noticed a familiar coat of arms streaming in the distance above the open sea.

Glenn dropped his sword and forgot all about the palm tree and the boat as he raced back into the jungle to where he had left Daven with his armour and clothes and the fire pit and the flint.

Glenn ran, and – _Gods! It was uncomfortable to run when you weren't wearing underwear_ – but it's now or never, so he kept running, and it wasn't long before he barrelled past the trees into the tiny clearing where he slept the previous night.

Daven was there, laying catatonic on the ground, although Glenn saw his eyes twitch and follow Glenn as he moved past.

Glenn bent down over the fire pit and ran his hands around for the flint, covered in ash and fallen leaves.

Having retrieved them, he started to head back for the beach, but…

He considered staying silent, but, in the end, it was too important.

Glenn walked up to Daven. He drew his foot back, impulsively, and then let it drop down to the ground before it made contact, equally impulsively.

"Get up!" Glenn commanded. "The Dragoons are here."

"Wha-?!"

Glenn's eyes widened as Daven bolted up into sitting position.

"I saw their ship on the horizon," he continued. "It's almost dark. Get up! We have to build a fire at the beach, so they can see us."

Glenn left before he could waste more time on Daven, before he lost the ship. But, contrary to his expectations, he could hear Daven scramble to get himself together behind him, and then run after him.

That, unlike anything else Glenn had said or done on the island, got Daven to pull his own weight.

The next couple hours were franticly trying to build a large enough fire, and then trying to contain the fire and, as much as Glenn wanted to kill Daven when he discovered the man had had red elementals with him all along, he didn't, because Daven really was being helpful for once.

It was a short eternity, filled with the single-mindedness of getting the ship's attention, and as the ship finally turned towards them and sent a dinghy to shore, Daven had gone and disappeared somewhere and Glenn suddenly realised how inappropriate it was for him to be standing here out of uniform, in only a white undershirt.

All his clothes were wet, after all, and it had been easiest to work wearing no more than a tunic and a pair of boots. He considered running back to retrieve his armour, not to mention a pair of pants.

But wouldn't it look even worse to run off just as they were getting to shore? And, well, it would just be his fellow soldiers, after all, the ones he dressed in front of everyday in the barracks.

...

It was not just his fellow soldiers. A pair of piercing red eyes met him in the darkness, and then there was a splash into the water, and the swishing sound of someone running through the surf to meet him.

Miss Riddel ran up to him and flung her arms around him, headless of the fact that she had gotten her dress soaked jumping out of the dinghy early, and apparently even more headless of the fact that Glenn wasn't wearing any pants.

"M-miss Riddel," Glenn stammered, hunching his shoulders and tugging down the hem of his shirt to cover himself, even as Miss Riddel tightened her grip around his torso.

"Oh, Glenn, you have no idea how worried- We're just so glad you're okay," Miss Riddel said.

"S..sorry to worry you," Glenn said, searching for something appropriate to say and, failing that, saying the most automatic instead.

"It was just so sudden, though. The storm came out of nowhere! And of course it had to hit just south of the continent, right where you were scouting."

Glenn had no idea why Riddel was recounting this. It wasn't as if Glenn didn't already _know_ about the storm. And the dinghy was coming into shore, with Glenn's actual officers this time.

"Miss Riddel," Glenn whispered. "I'm not really wearing… This really isn't appropriate."

Miss Riddel's eyes flashed downwards quickly. And then back up to his face with an amused look.

"I've known you since you were less than a foot tall, Glenn," Riddel chuckled. "And it's not as if you're having a problem right at this moment, are you?"

Glenn tugged shirt down further, because the only thing more embarrassing having a reaction to Miss Riddel in this situation was, apparently, being the only man in existence who wouldn't have a reaction to Miss Riddel in this situation.

"Teenagers, honestly~ You survive a storm, get shipwrecked on an island, and once we find you that's the first thing you think of~" Miss Riddel snickered to herself a bit more, before turning sad eyes and a soft smile onto Glenn. "I'm so glad you're in high spirits, though. After everything that happened with your brother, we were so afraid you might have…"

Glenn frowned and looked to the side, past Riddel's face.

"Leave my brother out of it," he said, quietly, requesting. "And you didn't have to send out a search party. I would have made it back. You didn't have to come."

"Don't be hurtful, Glenn," Miss Riddel replied, but her voice was gentle. "You must know how much we care for you."

Glenn has no answer to that, but Miss Riddel doesn't wait for one, regardless.

"And anyhow," Miss Riddel continued, teasingly, "if Daddy hadn't taken steps to commission the search himself, I'm pretty sure Karsh would have strong-armed one of the ships himself and piloted it out here. I haven't seen him this lively since…" Riddel pauses. "Well… you know."

"…Really?"

Glenn couldn't stop himself from asking, overcome with morbid curiosity. But he was happy the question had the decency to come out sceptically, rather than hopeful. Even if it meant Miss Riddel shooting him a chastising look.

"He made a complete nuisance of himself," Miss Riddel replied. "Shouting at the crew and threatening to run people through with his axe. He punched the navigator trying to get at the telescope, once they said they had spotted you." Riddel smiled. "Of course, he feels silly for worrying so much now that he knows you're okay."

Glenn tried to feel happy, but he sighed instead. He couldn't quite find it in himself to believe her.

"You'll see him soon enough," Miss Riddel said. "You must be tired. There's a cabin prepared for you on board. Gather your things and we can be on our way. It seems like your mission partner has caught up."

Glenn looked behind her and squinted into the twilight where, sure enough, Daven had reappeared to greet the officers that had rowed out to the island with Miss Riddel. He was in full uniform, speaking with incredible ease, and looking incredibly collected for someone who spent the last day and a half curled up in a ball.

And Glenn, still wearing only his tunic, was just paranoid enough to think it was entirely for the purpose of making him look bad. Reinforced when one of the officers raises a critical eyebrow at him. Glenn could practically feel his salary dropping.

.

.

Glenn does run into Karsh on the ship, once he's clothed (thankfully), and has just finished giving his report to his commanding officer.

He's heading to the cabin that Miss Riddel arranged for him on the ship. It's one of the nice cabins with a golden door handle near the top level, much nicer than anything that would normally be afforded to a soldier of his rank. Miss Riddel was pulling strings again, unnecessarily so, Glenn thinks briefly. Maybe the cabins reserved for the Devas are also on this level, because he hears Karsh shouting after him from the other side of the hall.

"Yo!"

Glenn turns, and Karsh saunters down the hall to catch up to him.

"You sure stirred up a lot of trouble for a routine mission, didn't cha?" Karsh asks, grinning.

"And how did your mission go?" Glenn deflects easily.

"Hah! It was just the area around Mt Pyre." Karsh shrugs. "What kind of trouble was I going to get into there?"

There's a pause. Glenn's too tired to hold a proper conversation right now.

"Yep!" Karsh continues, lacing his hands behind his head and shuffling on his feet. "Mt. Pyre. Boooring. Just me and Van and Marilius. For four days. Mt Pyre…"

Karsh's tone is light, but Glenn remembers how resistant Van and Marilius were to taking the mission. He probably had a horrible time.

 _Not that he deserved less,_ Glenn reminds himself. _He really_ did _kill Dario, after all, so people have a right to be suspicious._

"It's enough to make you miss the Shaker brothers," Karsh laughs, but it sounds fake.

The Shaker brothers are the joke of the entire battalion. Unlike Glenn, who's young compared to the average Dragoon, the Shaker brothers didn't join up until they were almost in their forties. But they act as green as all the other new recruits and are notoriously bad at everything they attempt to do.

Karsh isn't above taking shots at them, but he's also requested them for backup again and again.

They're following their dreams. And Karsh admires their spirit, for all he tries to hide it.

Glenn doesn't have any respect for that kind of thing, he's so past whatever his dreams once were, muddled somewhere between who Dario was and who Dario thought their father was. But it's endearing that Karsh still does.

The Shaker brothers. Riddel. Karsh really has a thing for lost causes.

"So yeah, it looks like you had all the fun on your mission," Karsh continues.

Glenn startles. He's so tired he's barely here for this conversation.

Karsh smirks lecherously though, in a way that instantly commands Glenn's attention. "A little too much fun apparently."

Glenn freezes, mind suddenly racing. Daven couldn't possibly have-

Karsh points to a spot just under Glenn's neck.

Glenn reaches up to cover it without thinking.

Damn, he could have played it off as a bruise, if he hadn't reacted so instinctively. A hickey? He hadn't even considered that Daven might have given him one. Hasn't even had time to look in a mirror…

"I never thought you were into that kind of thing." Karsh tisks. "Fairies, really?!"

"Um… what?" Glenn says, going white.

"Oh you know," Karsh sneers, flapping his arms by his side in some unreadable gesture.

"No, I-" Glenn starts instinctively, but he drops off before he can deny it fully.

There's a moment when they both stand there in silence, the bitter taste of indecision spreading in Glenn's mouth. The longer he stays silent, the less likely Karsh will believe him if he denies it. It's probably too late already.

Then Karsh breaks down, tears of mirth springing to his eyes. He pounds Glenn on the back before swinging his arm around his neck.

"Gah-ha-ha-ha! You should have seen your face!" Karsh laughs. "Relax a little. I know for a fact those fairies wouldn't give humans the time of day about something like that. It must have been that group of explorers that set up post on the isle."

 _Oh! Right! Those fairies. The ones that chatted his ear off during their inspection of Water Dragon Isle._

Glenn actually laughs then. "Yeah," he confirms, his muscles relaxing enough to allow him to lean into Karsh's arm.

"Researcher chicks, right?" Karsh asks, smiling wistfully. "It's too bad about Luccia, though. She might not be half bad if she wasn't insane."

"Yeah," Glenn repeats, closing his eyes, retreating to a world with no Luccia or Daven or Water Dragon Isle at all. It's just Glenn's feet on the floor, and Karsh's arm slung around his shoulder.

Karsh reaches up and ruffles Glenn's hair playfully before pushing him towards his cabin. "You look like you're dead on your feet, y'know? Get some rest."

He pauses for a moment.

"Glad you got back safe," Karsh adds and takes off before Glenn can respond.

Glenn smiles and sighs deeply as he enters his cabin.

Riddel was right. Karsh was finally acting like his usual lively self again.

And it's about twice as exhausting as Glenn remembers.

.

.

Gossip had always been rampant in the barracks and mess halls of Viper Manor. Not a day went by where premature intelligence, idle hearsay, and embarrassing conjuncture didn't exchange hands half a hundred times.

Glenn naturally despises it, because half the time they're talking about his brother, when they're not talking about Miss Riddel. More than once, Glenn has had to grab someone by the scruff of the neck and haul them out into the courtyard to defend his brother's or Miss Riddel's honour. Glenn doubted it kept anyone's mouth shut for long, but they'd learned when to keep quiet around him, at least. It had been a long time since anyone bothered him at his meals or while he was napping, except perhaps to relay information on the new codes and the anti-theft mechanisms that are sprouting up around the manor.

Glenn regretted his thoroughness in discouraging idle chatter now, though.

He was sitting at least a couple arms away from anyone else at the table, and trying not to glance nervously to his sides. He had absolutely no idea if Daven had kept his mouth shut about what happened while they were stranded on their way back from the Water Dragon Isle, and how would he? Nobody dared mention anything near him, certainly nothing about himself, or Dario, or Riddel, or Karsh, or even General Viper.

Glenn glanced behind his shoulder. Across the room on the other side of the mess hall, Daven looked completely calm as he talked with his friends. Glenn had been coming to meals late for the last week, with the express purpose of not giving Daven a chance to wander into meals and take a place next to him. So far Daven hadn't braved interrupting dinner to walk conspicuously across the hall to join Glenn either.

Daven wouldn't say anything, would he? He probably knew better- or he certainly couldn't say anything about their tryst without implicating himself, at least, probably.

 _But what if he did?_ Glenn wondered. Glenn could dismiss it as a baseless rumour, but the power of suggestion is a powerful thing – all the more so when the suggestion is actually true. How long would it take for someone to piece together his attachment to Karsh?

 _Before you cast a stone into the canal, think of where the ripples will travel,_ Dario's voice reminded him.

Glenn cursed his brother's useless advice. What good was it now that he had already slept with Daven? Now all there was to do was wait and see if the ripples travelled, and where.

Glenn didn't notice the way the entry door banged loudly, but he did notice how the chatter immediately picked up from all directions. He was pleased and disappointed to find it wasn't about himself, but about one of the few targets he does not object to gossip about.

 _Whiny little cunt, better suited for a sandbox._

 _Turns her nose up at every one of us, as if she weren't an orphaned street runt._

Marcy had been an ill fit as the newest Deva of the Acacia Dragoons ever since her appointment five months prior.

She was not a bad fighter by any means. She was not as swift as Glenn, and without the stamina of her fellow Devas, but her attacks were fierce and her skill with elements was almost unmatched.

 _She's right temperamental, too. Strung that old coot Varius up outside her room. Left him dangling from her wires. She's venomous I tell you, a little spider._

 _Not so little- they say she killed a man that was after General Viper's life. How else would she get the Deva position so quickly? She's deadly as they come!_

In fact, if she had not been such a good fighter, Glenn doubted she would make people half so uncomfortable as she did. Even Glenn felt it. He might have been younger than most of the troops, but for Marcy to be appointed a Deva at only _seven years of age?!_ The countenance of a bratty child, tempered with the knowledge that this was a prodigy on a level even the likes of Dario could not have matched… Marcy was unsettling, to say the least.

 _Those wires of hers. She really is part spider. Inhuman, they say._

 _Pft~ inhuman is right! But, not a spider- a fish. See those giant boots of hers? Two words: webbed feet._

 _Apparently she has fish parts down by her little hole as well. Varius had no idea how close he came~ She practically did him a favour by stringing him up before he got the chance!_

 _Eh~ I would have done the little fishie anyhow~_

The men around Glenn all burst into laughter as Glenn tried his best to ignore them. He stared moodily at the gruel in his bowl. Nobody around here had anything worthwhile to say, and if they had had something important to say, they would be talking about how disgusting he was, instead of Marcy.

"Hey, I, like, came here to talk with you!"

Glenn turned.

Everybody who had been sitting remotely close to him had shifted another metre away to make room for the visitor.

The girl had her hands on her hips and her feet rooted firmly to the ground, shoulder's width apart. She cocked her head defiantly, causing the pink ribbons dangling from her ox-horn buns to rustle and sway.

Glenn looked behind him in the hope that Marcy was, perhaps, talking to someone else.

His hopes were completely dashed as Marcy stepped forward to take a seat next to him. She struggled to lift her leg up to climb over the bench, and when she finally settled into her seat, her skirt was not pulled properly under her legs, but bunched up and unevenly pinned to the seat.

Glenn stirred his gruel idly with his spoon as he watched her.

"Er, what can I do for you, Miss Marcella of the Four Devas?"

Marcy gave him a look that spoke volumes about her appraisal of his intelligence.

"You can keep your dumb titles to yourself. The important thing is that I'm Marcy and, like, your superior officer," she huffed sternly. "Whether you like it or not!"

Her right hand hovered menacingly close to the wire dispenser under her buckler. Marcy seemed entirely ready to pick a fight, even though Glenn thought he had effectively acknowledged her seniority (in rank, if not age) in his address. He held back a sigh. Children were so…

Around them, the other soldiers were snickering and looking on at them in sadistic amusement.

Marcy puffed her cheeks out, and continued. "I am your superior officer, so whatever I say is, like, an official order. And what I say is that you're going to teach me how to ride a dragon."

Across the table, one of the soldiers burst out laughing, which instantly turned into a fit of stifled coughs as Marcy turned to glare angrily at him.

"You're a Deva of the Acacia Dragoons, and you don't know how to ride a dragon?" Glenn said incredulously, before he could think better of it.

Marcy quickly redirected her glare back at him. Her cheeks burned red. "Nobody showed me how!" she spit out defensively.

Glenn opened his mouth to apologise for his presumptuousness.

Marcy cut him off before he could get a word in.

"When's your next mission scheduled for?"

Glenn frowned. "I don't have one scheduled yet," he admitted. He was on probation after he had forgotten the passcode for one of the doors, and triggered a chain reaction of traps that had resulted in the entire entrance hall flooding. He had been assigned toilet cleaning duty, and little else, ever since.

"Well then you should be here on Saturday," Marcy said. "Meet me in the stables at, like, ten o'clock sharp."

Marcy quickly stood up and climbed back off the bench. She flattened out her skirt and, with a regal glance that encompassed not only Glenn, but the entire table he was sitting at, started to stomp off.

"Wait," Glenn said, before he could stop himself. "Why me?" he pleaded,

Marcy turned and looked at him pityingly. "If you haven't noticed, we're practically the same age," she said. "Everybody else around here is, like, a total old coot."

And with that, she flounced out of the room, completely ignoring the whispers that followed her down the table as she exited the hall.

It took a grand total of two seconds after Marcy had left for the soldiers to turn on him.

"Aw, aren't the two little babies sweet!" one of them called out, leaning in and leering at Glenn.

"Going on a pony ride together," another continued, batting his eye lashes.

"Isn't puppy love sweet?" a third called out, as a fourth made kissing noises.

Glenn resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. He shovelled a few last bites of gruel in his mouth before he stood and walked quickly across the mess hall to drop his dish off with Orcha.

For the first time in over a week, Glenn exited the mess hall without throwing one last suspicious glance over at Daven. His mind was too entrenched with other thoughts.

Gods help him, if Marcy, over ten years younger than him, thought they were _of an age_.


	5. Chapter 5

Glenn did not expect Saturday to go well, but he didn't expect things to go bad so quickly. He did not expect his first mistake to be arriving fifteen minutes early.

"So you see," the stable keeper moaned, "I dropped a brick on my foot the other day and I can't feed the dragons. Could you take over for me?"

Glenn looked at the man and raised his eyebrow. "You seem to be walking around fine to me…"

" _This?!_ " the man grumbled, walking quickly in a circle. "This isn't fast enough by far! This is a hundred times too slow! If I tried to feed the dragons like this…" he shivered, "imagine how angry they'd get."

Glenn looked at the dragons, who seemed to be resting contentedly in their stalls.

"They seem calm now. Why don't you just put the food out for them ahead of time?" Glenn asked suspiciously.

"Argh, you just don't get it do you. The dragons will only eat when they want to," the man frowned angrily. "Just help me feed 'em, okay?"

Glenn had reluctantly agreed, pulling a couple bales of hay out of the silo.

He was not expecting the horror that followed.

As soon as the man whistled that feeding time had begun, the dragons had immediately begun roaring angrily. Glenn swore and ran across the line of stables, throwing hay to them as quickly as possible. He ran out before he reached the last couple dragons, and had to turn back for more hay. But by the time he returned, the dragons would not accept the food he had brought. He held the bales up to their mouths, but they turned their heads away moodily. Glenn would have pressed the issue, if the first dragon had not started yelling again.

"What the- I thought I just fed you," Glenn said, as the dragon bit ferociously into its second serving.

"Hurry up!" the stable keeper called, pointing at the dragon Glenn had just left. It had already started roaring again. "No, no, no! You're making the dragons angry!"

Glenn growled under his breath and withheld from kicking the side of the stall in his frustration.

 _Dragons… like temperamental, petulant children! Anything was better than this._

That was what Glenn had thought at any rate. But the dragons, unlike actual temperamental children, could not speak.

"What. Do. You. Think. You're. DOING?!" a voice behind Glenn seethed.

Glenn swung around, accidentally slamming a bale of hay right in Marcy's face.

"Ai-eeeeeeeek!" Marcy screamed, while Glenn lost his footing and fell flat on his back.

"You're terrible at this!" the stable keeper shuddered. "I don't think you'll be doing that again! You better give up." He shook his head at Glenn.

Glenn gritted his teeth.

"Then _next time_ you can do your own _damn_ job! I don't _care_ how many damn bricks you drop on your foot!" Glenn shouted up from the ground, just as Marcy snapped to Glenn.

"Urgh! I asked you here to teach me how to ride a dragon! Not that I won't have you demoted to being this loser's aide, if you're, like, so set on it!"

Glenn stole one last angry glance at the stable keeper before pushing himself up off the ground and turning to Marcy, trying to look contrite.

Marcy pulled a couple of pieces of hay out of her hair, before jutting her chin up and meeting his eyes defiantly.

They just stood there for a moment. Glenn hadn't thought it was possible for someone half your height to look down on you.

"Please, Miss Marcella," the stable keeper interrupted, "don't appoint him as my aide. The dragons will be _so_ angry."

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Marcy snapped, turning away from Glenn. "We need two riding dragons saddled up. And _don't_ give me one of the little ones!"

The stable keeper bowed and busied himself with arranging the saddles.

Marcy and Glenn stood there.

A minute later, Glenn realised Marcy was tapping her foot against the ground impatiently.

It was annoying until a minute later, when Glenn realised he had started tapping his foot too. Then it became super annoying.

"Wouldn't the little dragons be more manageable?" Glenn asked. "And I'm pretty sure the young dragons are still impressionable, so you can train them to listen to your commands alone?"

Marcy silenced him with a glare.

Glenn looked away and they both just stood there for the remainder of the wait. But neither of them was tapping their feet anymore, so that was something.

The stable keeper finally reappeared, with two dragons – one Glenn recognised from his training days and another, full-sized, with shining scales and a miniature saddle. Marcy ordered him to arrange a stepping stool from wooden crates and bales of hay, and the stable keeper winced when Marcy sat down on the saddle in her pink dress, with the skirt fanned out unevenly around the saddle and brushing against the dragon's skin.

Marcy wasn't really dressed for riding, and the dress wasn't the only problem.

"I- I can't get my feet through…" Marcy said, directing a troubled look down to the dragon's side.

She hooked the stirrups on the very tip of her shoe, but no matter how she tried to squeeze her boots through, she couldn't fit them, and the stirrups of the little saddle slipped away. She kicked at them moodily, and they swung idly back and forth, knocking against the dragon's sides.

The dragons growled in protest and wiggled its behind side to side, causing Marcy to sway dangerously.

"Whoa whoa, steady, Miss Marcella," the stable keeper said, grabbing the dragon's reins and patting its side comfortingly.

The dragon calmed considerably.

"This dragon here's Donna. And dragons aren't the gentlest of creatures, but if you squeeze Donna's sides between your legs, you should be okay. Or I can try to replace the stirrups on this little saddle, although, it might take some time…"

Marcy hugged her legs tightly to the side of the dragon.

"Zoah and Karsh don't ride with the foot thingies," she said slowly, with growing resolve. "And Zoah sometimes just stands on top of his dragon."

"Alright then, Miss Marcel-"

"It's Marcy," she corrected curtly.

"Miss Marcy," the stable keeper hurried to correct, "I'll just lead you out into the yard, and then Sir Glenn can get to showing you the basics for riding the Viper Manor dragons."

They left, leaving Glenn alone in the stables with the other beast.

"N-nice dragon," he said tentatively, trying to stroke the side of the dragon's head.

The dragon didn't respond at all, except to snort out a breath of hot air. Glenn took it as a good sign. He mounted the steed and directed it rigidly out of the stable.

Marcy was waiting outside, sitting unsteadily on the dragon with her legs flopping down on each side. The stable keeper was giving her a wide birth.

Glenn held his head up and tried to look… confident? Sophisticated?

 _Like Dario?_

"Well, I suppose you just… er, the dragons are pretty intelligent, so they will usually understand if you use words like ' _slow'_ or 's _top'_. And then there are some other signals. And you probably need to practice a lot…"

Glenn rambled on, as Marcy looked on in confusion. He was doing alright, this was what his instructor had said, when he came in for dragon training, wasn't it?

"Well, you click your tongue to get them going, and then direct them with the reins," he finished. Marcy would get a handle on it soon enough.

Glenn demonstrated with his own dragon, walking it around in a circle.

"Now you try," Glenn prompted, pulling his dragon into a stop.

Marcy clicked her tongue and commanded the dragon to ' _Go!_ '. She bounced up on the saddle as the dragon straightened itself and started walking.

"Ha-ha!" Marcy laughed in delight, looking like any other carefree girl for a moment.

The dragon walked around in a circle, mirroring Glenn's path a moment earlier, before walking up to sniff at the other dragon's face.

Marcy was still beaming. She was pulling at the reins, but not tightly enough, and not in any consistent pattern. The dragon wasn't really responding to her so much as foraging its own path around the field. Marcy didn't seem to care all that much, though, and Glenn supposed it didn't really matter all that much, for the time being. Marcy would learn just by spending enough time riding the dragon… he hoped. Time spent without the need for his guidance… he hoped.

Glenn wondered what they should do now. When he had been training, they had run drills on speed training and crossing uneven terrain. Or maybe he should just start with a couple laps around the manor. If he directed his dragon off, Marcy's would surely follow, right?

"Hey! Like, where are _you_ going?!" Marcy shouted.

Glenn was, apparently, getting too far ahead of himself.

Marcy's dragon, left to its own devices, was walking off towards the side of the field, heading right for the rose bushes planted above the bluffs, heedless of the passenger sitting on its back.

Marcy tugged on the reins to no avail, as the dragon reached its neck out and started devouring red and white blossoms off of one of Miss Riddel's favourite bushes.

"Like, how do I get it to stop?" Marcy asked, holding onto her saddle with both arms as the dragon bobbed up and down, reaching for the food.

"Um…" Glenn looked pleadingly at the stable keeper, who seemed to be chuckling under his breath.

 _Useless!_

The dragon plunged the entire front of its body into the bush greedily. Marcy recoiled and scooted to the back of her saddle fearfully, trying to avoid the thorns.

"Well, you've got to tug back on the reins and force your dragon backwards," Glenn offered.

Yes, that was what you had to do but… how exactly _did_ you get the dragon to back up? It wasn't a natural movement for the beasts, compared to rotating and proceeding forward.

"Um, I think-" Glenn began. "It's something you do with your legs. You pull the reins backwards, and say something, and squeeze back with your legs somehow."

The dragon was walking further into the bush, though, and Marcy took action. She yanked back on her reins, shouting at the dragon to back up and stop-it-for-gods'-sake, and kicked backwards into the dragon's hind quarters frantically.

The dragon backed up, startled, out of the rosebush, and Marcy bounced up, attempting to grab hold of… something, as she squeezed in with her legs.

And for a moment, Glenn thought they had actually pulled it off.

Then the dragon took off, knocking Marcy up and over to the side, so that she landed on the ground with a thunk.

Glenn immediately pulled his dragon up and swung his leg over the side.

The dismount happened too quickly. His ankles absorbed too much weight when he jumped down, so he was stumbling on his feet now that he'd hit the ground. And his dragon startled badly and took off after Marcy's.

"My dragons!" the stable keeper cried, looking much less amused than before, as he bolted after them.

Glenn wobbled and ran over to Marcy.

She was curled up on the ground, facing away from him, clutching her knee with both hands. The pale skin was blotched with inflamed red patches around her joint.

"Are you okay?" he asked Marcy.

"Just fine!" her voice rung out, as strong as ever.

Her knee didn't look fine, though.

Glenn sighed and stepped forward to help her.

The effect was immediate.

Marcy sat up, her knee still twisted unnaturally to the side, and reached for her buckler. She pulled out a short line of wire, holding it out in front of her neck. The air around them turned moist and cold, as a blue elemental spell condensed around them.

"I _said_ , I'm fine!"

The ice cold floated around them, and Glenn hesitated, leaning backwards and forwards, unable to decide what to do.

Marcy was hurt, and there was a responsibility towards her – both as his student, and as his superior in the Dragoons.

On the other hand, she seemed liable to snap, like a cornered dog.

"I said – I'M FINE!" Marcy bellowed. "Like, LEAVE! Just, LEAVE!"

And Glenn didn't need telling twice that time. He turned on his heel, walked past the confused stable keeper dragging the runaway dragons back by their reins, and stalked back to the entrance of the manor.

And, being honest with himself, he had to admit that he was entirely relieved that Marcy had dismissed him, and that he wouldn't have to bother himself with her from now on.

.

.

Glenn went back to Termina on Sunday.

He walked alone along the promenade and then up the vista point and looked out over the endless sea.

He dropped by the Smithy to give his regards to Zippa and Zappa, and to visit his and Dario's old room.

The new tenant, Marina, already had her stuff spread out over Dario's bed and dresser. But she wasn't there, and Glenn couldn't wait around for her. He had to be back at Viper Manor that night, to report for duty the next morning at daybreak.

He only had a couple of hours. He couldn't take the time to meet her.

It was better that way.

And the city seemed almost peaceful, even with all the people running through the streets. They were all scrambling about and knocking into each other and pick-pocketing one another in some kind of harmony.

Glenn bought a couple of Viper Churros, and everything seemed like it was going to be fine.

Of course, that was a dream too far gone.

On Monday, fresh from cleaning the latrines, Glenn was sitting in the mess hall when the chatter died down and the whispers and jeers and laughs started up again.

Glenn felt himself slump down further in his seat, even before he heard the light tap-tap-tap of boots approaching his seat at the table.

Marcy climbed over the bench and settled herself in the seat right next to him.

Glenn chanced a look at her out of the corner of his eye.

She was facing forward, staring intently at the seat in front of her, with her lips pursed, as if she were contemplating something hard.

Glenn turned away and forced himself to swallow a bite of stew.

Marcy crossed her legs.

Her boots clanged against the bench legs.

They both sat there a couple of minutes.

Glenn continued eating.

Marcy uncrossed her legs again.

The other Dragoons were hiding their smirks behind their hands.

Then Marcy's hand squiggled under her buckler, and Glenn tensed, expecting her to draw out her wires, like she always seemed to – silently issuing threats.

But what she actually did was much, _much_ worse.

Marcy began to tap her fingers against the inside of her buckler.

 _scritch- scritch- click- clickity- scritch- scritch- click_

Her fingernails scraped against the stiff sheet of metal in perfect rhythm, like a clock set to a beast's claws raking against the bars of a cage.

 _click- crickity- scritch- scritch_

"Are you going to eat?" Glenn burst out, suddenly unable to bear it any longer.

"What?" Marcy startled.

She withdrew her hand promptly from her buckler, as she turned to look at Glenn, her cheeks flushed red.

"Food. This is a mess hall. We eat here."

As a Deva, Marcy would probably have had her food delivered to her quarters most of the time, the same way Karsh and Riddel did.

"Oh, right," Marcy said. "Like, fine."

She struggled to get her legs back over to the other side of the bench, before standing up and walking off in the wrong direction. She meandered up towards the front of the hall, before finding her way – circling back around to the side, near the western entrance where the kitchen and food line were located.

All the while, the stares of the other Dragoons followed her, although she refused to meet them, proceeding with her eyes set straight forward.

A couple of the braver soldiers even leaned in to question Glenn in her absence, but Glenn ignored them. He was busy watching Marcy as she reached the beginning of the serving area. There was a small partition between the kitchen and the rest of the hall – small for most of the Dragoons at least. Marcy was completely hidden by it, and was stomping her feet and shouting, trying to get Orcha's attention.

Orcha was a calm man, though, and when he finally leaned over the partition and saw Marcy glaring up at him, he only broke into a laugh and began serving her a portion of the afternoon meal.

He walked out from the kitchen and bent down to hand Marcy a small tray.

Marcy frowned, but she accepted the tray in her diminutive hands with a short bow, before making her way back across the hall to Glenn's place at the table.

Glenn suddenly realised he had neglected to eat while she was gone, and quickly shoved several spoonfuls of stew into his mouth.

Marcy approached quickly, and she reached up to push her tray next to Glenn, before climbing back over the bench to sit down, smiling triumphant.

Her smile died as she sat up and looked over the table.

"You, like, don't have a tray," Marcy said indignantly.

Glenn shrugged.

The rest of them had to juggle their bowls and mugs and utensils on the way to their seats. There just weren't enough trays to go around.

Marcy scowled, but she arranged her spoon in her hand anyhow, taking a spoonful of stew and blowing on it before lifting it to her mouth.

Her face twisted in disgust as she swallowed.

Glenn couldn't blame her. It was spicy beef and okra. _Too slimy._

Glenn continued eating anyhow though – it didn't do much good to be picky – and Marcy even managed a couple of bites, when she wasn't just pushing the stew around in her bowl.

But even though Orcha's dinners weren't always to Glenn's taste, his desserts were always tasty so far as Glenn was concerned.

It was usually pudding or gelatine – something that could be dished out to a hundred soldiers easily – and tonight it was grapefruit cooked into a custard.

And Glenn picked up his serving and dug his spoon into it with relish.

Marcy only stared at her pudding though, not moving to eat it at all. Orcha had given her a double serving – in an actual bowl, instead of just a dessert cup like he usually did with the soldiers.

"Aren't you going to eat it?" Glenn asked. "It's a lot better than the stew. …kids like sweet things, right?"

"I'm not a kid!" Marcy snapped.

It seemed to break her out of her trance, and she pushed herself up so she was standing on the bench, her head hovering slightly above Glenn's.

"We're starting again on Wednesday," she said.

"Wha-" Glenn began automatically.

Marcy cut him off. "You're going to teach my how to ride a dragon!" she insisted.

 _But they had already tried that, and it had gone horribly._

 _Dario would have been patient with her. It wouldn't have gone horribly if-_

"But I already have an assignment on Wednesday," Glenn protested.

He wasn't off toilet-cleaning duty until Friday. But compared to spending more time with Marcy…

"I had you reassigned," Marcy said simply, hopping down from the table. She reached over to grab her tray. "I'm, like, a Deva. Remember?" she asked, and took off before Glenn could get a word in edgewise.

 _Curse the Dragon Gods! This was getting out of hand._

Marcy strode through the hall, in the correct direction this time, on a direct path to where Orcha was standing.

She presented the tray to him, with half her stew, and the entire serving of pudding, untouched.

Orcha didn't seem offended though, and he laughed good-naturedly as he bent down to accept the tray from her.

At the last minute, though, Marcy turned on him.

As Orcha went to stand up, she swiped the bowl of pudding right off the tray and bolted for the door.

"Oi! Wha'CHA think you're doin'? You can't just run off with my dishes!" Orcha leaned out into the hall and called after her, as the rest of the hall descended into laughter.

.

.

"Your instincts weren't wrong. It may be worthwhile for Marcy to train up one of the younger dragons herself. But for now, she is just a beginner. One of the older dragons – a meek one who is familiar with humans, and unlikely to throw her off its back – she should start there."

Miss Riddel poured hot water into the glass pitcher, where red freckles of spice circled upwards to meet it, swirling like a hurricane.

"Equipment is another issue. The stable keeper can probably retrofit one of the saddles for her," Miss Riddel continued. "Or we can commission a special one. I know Zappa prefers metalwork to leatherwork, but I'm sure he'll come through for us. Something made with light material, so the dragons will be sensitive to her touch, with… extensions on the legs… and stirrups that are large enough for those boots of hers."

The water in the pitcher had turned a muddy red colour, Riddel stirred it with a slotted spoon several times before lifting the pitcher and pouring the water through a strainer into a pair of cups. She offered the first to Glenn.

The tea was clear but, if Glenn looked closely, he could still see tiny particles of cinnamon and cardamom turning tumultuously in the water.

"What kind of Dragoon doesn't know how to ride a dragon?" Glenn asked incredulously. "Shouldn't she have been signed up for training upon her appointment?"

"Yes, it was quite an oversight on Daddy's part," Miss Riddel said graciously.

Glenn gulped down a mouthful of tea and promptly burned his tongue. His cup swayed dangerously in his hand, as he attempted to fan air into his mouth.

"Calm, Glenn." Riddel said. She called forth some blue elements, and ice crystals began to form in Glenn's cup.

Glenn poured the now cold tea down his throat, in an attempt to quell the burning.

Miss Riddel giggled.

 _This wasn't going as planned. Miss Riddel wasn't making the offer._

Glenn set down his empty cup. (Miss Riddel poured him a refill – steaming hot – which he ignored.)

"You can't seriously expect me to teach this girl anything," Glenn protested. "She's bratty, and wilful, and doesn't listen to a thing I say. I'm not even qualified to teach her. I didn't learn how to ride a dragon until a little over a year ago."

It was mandatory for Dragoon enlistees, even those who were only foot soldiers, to have some basic training in dragon handling. _Basic_ training.

It wasn't like he had grown up next to the stables, riding dragons into Termina every other week since infancy, like Riddel had.

"Oh, I think you're qualified," Miss Riddel said.

She lifted her teacup to her mouth, and her lipstick bled into the tea in dark rivulets.

"But more importantly, Marcy seems to think you're qualified. She sought you out not once, but twice, did she not?"

Glenn frowned. "Only because she has- _delusions ,_ or- She thinks we have a _connection,_ Miss Riddel. Because she thinks we're the _same age_!"

Miss Riddel tapped her fingers against her tea cup softly.

It was a moment before she spoke.

"I know it was hard for you, Glenn. I was the closest in age to you, but still not close enough. I know you always felt the distance of years between yourself and the rest of us."

"That's not the point!" Glenn protested. "The point is that this _girl_ has attached herself to my knee, taken over my assignment scheduling, forced me to teach her about riding dragons, a subject of which I'm hardly a master of, and all on the basis of a completely _asinine_ assumption about age!"

Glenn was actually panting by the time he finished his rant. And he was a little embarrassed too. He shouldn't have spoken with such abandon around Miss Riddel. But, with any luck, he'd have finally gotten through to her, at least.

Riddel's eyebrows scrunched together and she ran a finger over the rim of her teacup in concentration.

"What- what is it exactly that you want me to say, Glenn?" she finally asked.

Glenn groaned and ran a hand through his hair, catching it on his headband in the process.

 _Typical._

"Wouldn't _you_ be more suited for teaching Marcy, Miss Riddel? You're far more practiced in riding than I am. And, as a woman, you'd be better able to relate with…"

Glenn realised he had misspoke, from the way Miss Riddel's cold look silenced him.

"Hm, I'm glad you think I'm a skilled dragon rider," Miss Riddel said, in a voice that indicated she was neither glad, nor willing to budge an inch on this issue. "But, as you have already correctly observed once, assumptions, be they of gender or of age, are not accurate measures with which to tackle this problem."

"What 'measures' _are_ you using then?" Glenn grumbled.

Miss Riddel smiled. "Your supervisors have complained about you."

"Have they?" Glenn groaned.

"They say that you disregard protocol, keep forgetting the passcodes and get lost around the manor, and that you have trouble working with others."

Glenn didn't respond.

 _Dario. What would he have said, if he knew how much trouble Glenn was having?_

"Marcy hasn't complained though," Riddel said. "Even when our stable keeper did. He came and started to talk Daddy's ear off about Saturday."

 _Hadn't been allowed to finish,_ Glenn realised.

Miss Riddel took another draught of her tea. "And, besides, Miss Marcella doesn't like me," she said. "Hmm… maybe that's unfair, but she certainly isn't very comfortable around me. And you – for whatever reason, Marcy trusts you, possibly more than anybody else in the manor excepting Luccia."

" _Luccia?_ " Glenn asked. Glenn could hardly think of anybody less trustworthy. The only time he had ever spoken with her, she had tried to enlist him in a human experimentation project.

Riddel kept on regardless. "Marcy needs that. Trusting doesn't come easily to her so, regardless of how arbitrary her reasons, it won't do to discourage her. She trusts you, and Daddy and I trust you with her, so you are solely and uniquely suited to train her in dragon riding."

Miss Riddel's tone booked no argument.

"There was something else I wished to warn you about, Glenn," Riddel added.

Glenn clenched his teeth, behind sealed lips.

Of course Riddel has something she needs to _talk_ about.

Riddel seeks him out constantly.

She does, but the part Glenn likes to leave out is that he seeks her out too.

Not that it ever gets him anywhere.

Glenn wondered if Miss Riddel came away from their conversations as frustrated as he did.

Her tea cup was empty. The pitcher had grown lukewarm.

"Have you ever heard of the Frozen Flame?" Miss Riddel asked.

 _As long as we are alive, it is impossible to avoid partings._ Sadness.

 _I know that already! Don't read my mind any further than that!_ Anger. Fear.

 _You have no right to say such a thing! I am my own person! I will choose my own destiny with my own strength!_ Glenn shouted out, into the void.

Glenn had to admit that he had never heard of the Frozen Flame. He shook his head.

Miss Riddel told him what she knew – which isn't much more than it's an object of great power and General Viper and the Porre Military are both much too interested.

But, honestly, Glenn had only just heard of the thing, and he was already hoping that would be the last of it.

.

.

Wednesday's practice had gone much better than Saturday's. Riddel had had a rider's teaching manual delivered to Glenn's bunk. Marcy's saddle had been retrofitted. The stable keeper had been put upon. And they had managed to circle the grounds right outside the manor a couple of times, slowly and with some unexpected detours, but without anyone falling off their dragon this time.

Only, a month and a dozen more riding lessons had come and gone, and Glenn was starting to think that Miss Riddel might be on to something about Marcy.

Because their riding lesson for the day was already over, and Marcy _still_ wouldn't _leave_!

"So then I was like, what a _moron_! Like, leaving his side open like that-"

They were walking down the main hall of the manor, and Glenn was discretely trying to slip away, waiting for his chance to turn down the stairs towards his bunks.

But Marcy just _would not stop_.

Marcy grinned widely, relaying the results of her latest sparring match. "So I hit him in the side with an Ice Lance, up and under the ribs, at the liver. And then I kicked him in the nads!"

Glenn winced.

 _Jeez, since when were children this bloodthirsty?_

"But then I, like, got some blood stains on my gloves. And they said I could just dye them red instead, but pink is, like, so much better. Don't you think pink is better?"

Marcy looked up at him in a way that dared him to disagree.

"Er…" Glenn began.

He was thankfully saved from answering, by the sudden appearance of Karsh and the Shaker brothers, who entered through the manor's front doors. They caught sight of Glenn and Marcy approaching from the other side of the hall, and Karsh waved before making a beeline for them, Solt and Peppor following quickly in his trail.

Marcy wrinkled her nose.

"Ugh, I'll, like, see you later," she said, turning and fleeing in the other direction.

Glenn let out a sigh of relief.

"Yo!" Karsh said, as he jogged up.

Solt and Peppor caught up, screeching to a halt behind him, panting and trying to catch their breath.

Glenn looked back at Marcy fleeing, and the blue and pink ribbons that fluttered behind her as she turned the corner.

"She sure left quickly," Glenn said. _Thank the gods!_ "Did you do something to scare her off?"

" _Me_?" Karsh said, giving his best innocent look. "Nah! She just doesn't like me much. She got impatient and ran off on her own the last time we had a mission together, and I ended up chewing her out for breaking protocol."

Karsh flexed his arm and gave Glenn a winning grin.

"If you don't stick together, that's when people end up getting hurt, y'know?"

 _Unless they_ do _stick together, and then start pulling swords on each other_. Glenn frowned and thought of Dario.

"How about you?" Karsh asked, interrupting before his thoughts could take him too far. "You and the little missy seem to be getting along, eh?"

"Is that what you'd call it?" Glenn lifted his arm to scratch the back of his head.

Solt and Peppor seemed to finally catch their breath.

"Forgive us, Sir Glenn," Solt cried.

"Yes, we are terribly sorry, we meant to greet you sooner," Peppor said. "But we've been shaking it as fast as we could all day and-"

"Aaah! You bozos! Put a sock in it! Glenn already knows who you are," Kars called out, kicking backwards at Peppor's shin with his foot.

"Er… hello," Glenn said, waving back at the brothers, belatedly.

"Lady Riddel says the two of you are getting along, at least," Karsh persisted. "Aren't ya giving her dragon riding lessons?"

Glenn nodded.

"Yes, when I'm not cleaning up around the manor." Glenn gritted his teeth. "I would rather be on a real mission, like you-"

"No ya wouldn't," Karsh cut him off, frowning. "Look at how tired these two are." He jabbed a finger over in Solt and Peppor's direction. "Best case scenario, you'd be tracking down bandits in small farming villages. Worst case, you'd be with me, dealing with the Porre Army. They killed old Barty last week, but it's all still under the radar. Dealing with bastards like that, and trying to prevent it from breaking out into open warfare… They're just itching for an excuse to invade!"

 _Worst case scenario, you'd be with me_ , Karsh had said.

Glenn sighed and dropped the subject.

"…You've been looking out for Miss Riddel, I presume?" Glenn asked.

Karsh was still seething about the Porre Army. "Huh?" he said, confused.

"Miss Riddel," Glenn repeated. "You said she told you I was getting along with Marcy. Miss Marcella, I mean. You've been looking after Miss Riddel, I presume?"

"Yeah, sure. We're friends," Karsh said, his voice full of dissatisfaction. "All three of us are friends."

He gestured between himself and Glenn, and the invisible third point that could have just as easily meant either Dario _or_ Riddel.

Karsh's grin faltered.

"All three of us are friends, right?" he asked.

There's no way for Glenn to answer that question that won't make him hate himself.

Glenn crossed his arms and held Karsh's gaze. He waited for Karsh to answer the question himself.

 _Could_ Karsh call himself Glenn's friend, after murdering Glenn's brother?

"Gah-ha-ha!" Karsh laughed nervously, turning bright red. "I gotta split and go give my latest report to the General! Take care of yourself, kiddo!"

He ruffled Glenn's hair on the way past, and stormed off down the hall.

"Moving out! It was verily very good to see you, Sir Glenn," Solt and Peppor both saluted, before speeding off after Karsh.

Glenn tilted his head in confusion, and turned back towards their retreating figures. Solt and Peppor were the same rank as him, they didn't have to salute… him…

… _Hmmm._

Glenn's eyes caught on the seat of Karsh's pants, entranced by the way the muscles tightened… and loosened… and tightened…

"Hello," a voice said from behind him.

Glenn jumped, and swung around wildly, his hand reaching for his sword.

 _If it had been Dario… Dario never wouldn't have let somebody sneak up on him like that. Dario would never have let himself get so distracted that somebody could sneak up on him like that._

 _Shut up!_ Glenn tells himself. _Leave my brother out of this!_

It was Daven. Right… Daven… from Water Dragon Isle… Glenn was surprised at how long it took him to realise it. Hadn't he been avoiding Daven, afraid of the rumours he might spread? When had Glenn stopped paying attention to that?

Glenn didn't draw his hand away from his sword, but he relaxed his stance, allowing his hand to hang loosely over the sword hilt.

His facial expression did not relax, though. Glenn's eyebrows furrowed tightly with suspicion.

Daven didn't rise to the bait. His face was disinterested, but the truth of the situation was belied by the fact that he was _here_ , confronting Glenn at last.

"Hey, it's been a while," he said, lightly.

Glenn frowned, his eyes narrowing and urging Daven to get to the point.

Daven continued. "Listen, sorry for giving you the cold shoulder and everything. I was a bit worried about how you'd react, after- you know- Water Dragon Isle and all."

Glenn was confused. _Cold shoulder?_ Glenn was the one who had done the avoiding. Glenn hadn't wanted to deal with Daven, after their tryst.

Then it connected.

Daven had been avoiding him _too_ , the bastard. Who the hell did he think he was _–_ getting all hysterical and unprofessional after a setback on their mission, initiating a sexual encounter with his junior officer, and then not even having the guts to face Glenn afterwards?!

Daven wasn't reacting to the veritable kaleidoscope of emotions that inevitably passed over Glenn's face.

"So what've you been up to?" Daven asked. "I heard you've been hanging around Marcy a lot lately."

"What business is it of yours?!" Glenn snapped. He wasn't prepared for the way this conversation was whipping rapidly between topics – all topics which he's uncomfortable with.

"It's not my business really," Daven replied, unfazed. "Just wondering. Making conversation and all."

Glenn glared.

Daven relented. "Well, you know what everyone else says about the two of you?"

"What do they say?" Glenn growled.

"Well…" Daven trailed off. "You know."

Daven raised an eyebrow and made a crude gesture with his hands.

"That's disgusting!" Glenn hissed. "She's _seven years old_!"

"Didn't stop Varius from staking out her bedchambers," Daven said.

Glenn froze.

Yes, the men made jokes about Marcy and him all the time. _Puppy love,_ and _riding dates_ and other trash. They did the same for every inane piece of gossip they got their hands on. He had never even bothered to feel uneasy about it.

Of course nobody really _believed_ it… It was… He had thought there was no reason to! Why would anyone…?! Marcy was a _child_. After all, nobody would ever…

"What?" Glenn said.

Daven must have read the confusion on his face. "It's not as if anything came of it," he said, "except Varius almost getting castrated, and then getting reassigned to some guard post out in the sticks, on the other side of El Nido.

"But, really," Daven continued incredulously, "did you think Miss Marcella, one of the four Devas, moved back into her caretaker's quarters for no reason?"

Glenn didn't even know Marcy had changed rooms at all. Was he really that _clueless_?! He didn't care to think about it too much.

Fortunately, or not, Daven redirected the topic back onto other subjects.

"Well, so far as _you're_ concerned, I know better, of course," Daven shrugged. "I mean, leaving her age aside, I assumed you were like me for a while. But you really don't like women at all, do you?"

"I'm good friends with Miss Riddel," Glenn deflected, although the words sounded artificial and unreal twice over. Daven was the one person he couldn't lie to about his attraction to men.

And Riddel wasn't really his friend. She had been a hair's length away from becoming his sister-in-law. She was the object of Karsh's affections, with all the unspoken envy that entailed. She was complicit in their shared suffering over the loss of Dario. Riddel and he – they would fight to the death, if it was for the other's sake.

But they are not friends.

"You know that's not what I meant," Daven said, with a touch of something like pity.

Glenn could feel the rage boiling up in his stomach, dying his face bright red.

The last time he had spoken to Daven, the man was having a nervous breakdown. And now, here he was, acting all disaffected and patronising, while Glenn struggled to keep from blowing up.

 _Dario wouldn't lose his temper in this situation._

 _Dario would never have gotten into a situation like this in the first place._

"And _how_ are _you_ any different?" Glenn hissed.

"Well, I'm getting married to my fiancé in Termina this month, for one," Daven said.

The next surge of rage brought with it astounding clarity. For even _Daven_ , the _clear_ instigator of what had happened between them, to be able to get married.

 _Ah, so that was it. I didn't want anything to do with him after we got back from our mission. But still I wanted him to want_ me _. I wanted somebody else to want me, for once._

Glenn was still reeling from that last comment, when he heard what Daven had to say next.

"And I'm also not in love with Sir Karsh."

"What?" Glenn said again.

Daven snorted.

"Please, you heard me. It's obvious to anyone who knows what to look for. Do you even realise the _absurd_ amount of time you spend looking at Sir Kar-"

Glenn drew his sword and used his forearm to ram Daven into the wall, right into some kind of snake statue.

Glenn glanced up and down the hallway quickly. It was empty, but this obviously isn't a safe place to have this conversation, with such a large number of people moving in and out of here so quickly.

Daven was reaching down to his belt for his sword, but Glenn pinned his right arm before he could get to it, and pressed his forearm up into Daven's neck to cut off his air.

"Don't you _ever_ breathe a word of this _ever again_!" he said, hoping he sounded twice as threatening and not at all as scared as he felt.

He released his arm and let Daven fall back down to the ground.

Daven reached up to feel his neck. "Geez, I wasn't going to tell-"

"Who is Marcy staying with?" Glenn cut him off. "I need to speak with her."

"Do you?" Daven asked, looking at Glenn with contempt.

Glenn frowned and contemplated murder.

"Relax, I'll tell you," Daven chuckled. "She's staying with Luccia. In the lab downstairs."

Glenn wrinkled his nose suspiciously, because Luccia doesn't seem like the motherly type, and maybe Daven was lying to him. But he remembered Miss Riddel telling him that Marcy trusted Luccia more than anyone else in the manor, and suddenly _that_ makes sense at least.

Riddel had also said that Marcy trusted _Glenn_. But obviously this trust was misplaced. He didn't even care to pay enough attention to know that that other soldier, Varius, had attempted to assault her.

 _Dammit, he needed to speak with her. To fix this._

He turned away, to run down the hall and downstairs to Luccia's chambers, but then, at the last minute he turned back to Daven.

"Thank you, Sir Daven," Glenn forced himself to say, in a rare bit of foresight. "For the information… and for keeping quiet." He saluted.

Daven laughed again, and shook his head, but Glenn was already gone, running down the hallway and downstairs to the lab.

 _He needed to talk to her. He needed to somehow undo the last month of bickering and exasperation. He should have been more… sensitive… to her situation… somehow…_

The lab door was heavy and wooden, and Glenn grasped the knob and swung his whole weight into it.

The room inside was large and full of metal cages and test tubes and other, more terrifying things.

Like the woman in the white lab coat and bandana who was standing in front of him.

"Oh hoho," Luccia laughed. "Dere are not many, who vould come busting into my lab, like dat."

"O-oh," Glenn said, at a loss for words.

"No, but I know of you," Luccia continued, her glasses reflecting the light from the lamp overhead. "You are de knight, de one who 'as been looking after Marcy lately. Ve 'ave met once before, briefly."

"Er, yes. That's right," Glenn agreed.

"Kom, kom, you must sit down! I vill t'ank you, for taking good care of Marcy."

Luccia gestured to a large table in the centre of the room, and bade Glenn sit. When he did, she crossed to the other side of the table, but didn't sit down.

Instead she stood, leaning over the table and looking down at Glenn.

Luccia was his height, already discomfortingly tall, when they were both standing. But now she towered over him.

Glenn wrung his hands, fidgeting.

"Marcy stays here in your quarters, correct?" Glenn looked towards the door in the back, that probably led to Luccia's private quarters, and then around the lab, at the metal instruments and organs and petri dishes. "What… exactly is it you _do…_ in here?"

Luccia's eyes shone with excitement.

"Oh hoho! My focus 'as always been in biological weaponry. I am vorking on several projects at de moment. Dere are many t'ings one can study in mass contamination and disease – but de practical applications of such a project are highly dangerous. Neverdeless, I am studying de toxins in slimes for use in battle. My other vork is in monster hybrids. I am attempting to create monster hybrids which are friendly and intelligent."

Luccia granted him a wide smile.

"But dey must also be powerful to serve our purposes. Perhaps you can assist me in testing them, no?"

"Er… perhaps later," Glenn allowed. "I'm actually searching for Marcy, right now-"

"Ah, yes, Marcy. She 'as been my most difficult project from de start, and not de most rewarding, I must say," Luccia sighed. "But dere was nothing to do. As unsuited as I am for dis position, 'er fat'er – let us only say dat he vas never dat comfortable vith women and ve, Zelbess and I… ve vould 'ave felt even more uncomfortable leaving 'im with 'is infant daughter."

 _Zelbess? Daughter? Leaving?_

It was a family history lesson Glenn felt completely unprepared to understand.

"In de end, Marcy 'as proven 'er vorth several times over," Luccia allowed. "It's due to her intervention on de General's part dat I 'ave this lab. My former master vould 'ave been proud..."

Luccia looked wistfully off into the distance.

"That's… good to know," Glenn decided. "But I was searching for Marcy and, if she's not here, where could I…"

Luccia looked at him critically.

"Vell, I could tell you, but vat is in it for me? You 'ave come barging into my lab, and asked for information, and I am very much in need of test subjects…"

 _Pause._

"Oh, hoho!" Luccia laughed. "I suppose I vill let you off, just dis once. Out of my gratitude to you for de help vith Marcy."

Glenn let out a sigh of relief, and allowed Luccia to direct him to the door.

"Marcy vill be on the upper levels, in de library," Luccia volunteered. "Now, vat is it dey say? 'Don't' let de door hit you on de way out!'"

And with that she shoved him back out into the hall and slammed the wooden door behind him.

.

.

Glenn rammed his side against the library doors, once, twice, thrice.

They refused to budge.

Glenn felt the anger bubbling up inside him.

 _He had to get in there._

He felt the heat gather in his fingertips, and he let it continue, until his whole arm was boiling hot. He had been much more careful about stocking red elementals since he'd been stranded on the way back from Water Dragon Isle.

Glenn forced the spell forward, away from his hand and towards the barrier, so the flames leapt up around the lock, softening the metal.

Then he drew his sword and jammed it through the gap between the doors, using it as leverage to pry them open so he could slip through.

Away from the windy heights of the cat walk, Glenn beheld the room he had entered.

The inside of the library tower was luxurious, even compared to Miss Riddel's chambers. The hardwood floor was covered in a plush red rug. Books were piled on heavy polished cedar shelves, all the way up to the ceiling. Light poured through an intricately designed stained-glass window, depicting the saint, the first White Cobra in human form. And from the ceiling hung a finely-crafted steel mobile, modelled after their stars.

Glenn suddenly felt a strong, and intensely magical presence in front of him, and stood to attention.

The old man in front of him was not only smiling, but seething.

"So you've destroyed my lock, have you?" the man asked.

Glenn blinked. "I… had to get in," he said weakly.

Now that he had made it through the obstacles, he wasn't sure why he had been in such a rush to get here in the first place, and at all costs. Where was Marcy anyhow? He looked around curiously.

"Oh?" the man, probably the librarian, asked. "And it didn't occur to you to just knock?"

"Er… no," Glenn admitted.

"Young man, you _do_ realise it is very hard to keep these books preserved for future generations, especially when you open them up to the wind and rain, as you have just done."

Glenn looked back, remorsefully at the double doors. They stood ajar, swinging open and closed with the breeze.

There was nothing to be done. He had already ruined them.

The old man sighed.

"Still, you must have had a reason for coming here. This place is off-limits to foot soldiers, like yourself, so you must have had to break through quite a few security measures to get here."

"Uh, not much," Glenn said, scratching the back of his head. "Just some Lantern Jaws... a couple of Man-of-War suits of armour... I had to disarm a Roborg at some point… and then there were some arrow traps on the landing…" he admitted.

The old man sighed again.

"Well, so long as you're here..." He turned back and shouted up into the library. "Marcy! Will you return to the lower level, please? It appears you have a guest here to see you."

The man turned back to Glenn.

"I am Belthasar. I suppose it is a matter of fate that we have met here in this place, and here in this time, Glenn."

"Oh, did Marcy speak of me?" Glenn asked.

Belthasar laughed. "Now… go ahead." He gestured further into the library. "Meet her halfway," he urged.

Glenn nodded and stepped further inside, up several flights of stairs, to where he could see a balcony spread out above him. Marcy was standing at the top, looking down at him, unimpressed, like usual.

"Oh. It's _you_ ," she said, as if he were some kind of household pest that she wasn't sure she wanted to put the effort into squashing.

Glenn frowned instinctively.

 _Damn._ This had seemed so much simpler talking to Daven, where Marcy was only the silent victim of the other soldiers' actions. It seemed so much less clear cut, with Marcy standing in front of him, acting as rude and antagonistic as always.

What was he supposed to say to her? _Sorry, somebody tried to molest you?_ It wasn't as if anything had changed. Except that Glenn felt the dubious need to be patient and kind with her now, and he had no idea how to accomplish that.

"Hold on," Marcy said. "Like, I'll be down in a minute."

Marcy walked across the balcony slowly, and flipped a switch against one of the bookshelves. A ladder began to descend to where Glenn was standing, and Marcy turned to walk back to it.

"So I heard you broke the lock," she shouted down conversationally.

"Yes," Glenn said, his cheeks colouring slightly.

Marcy scoffed. "Are you, like, a moron or something?" she asked.

And Glenn listened to that, really listened, and heard that there was more fondness than malice there.

"Maybe," Glenn admitted. "They always used to say I was too impulsive."

"Who says?" Marcy asked. "Like, who's 'they'?"

She sat down on the edge of the balcony, near the ladder, and placed her foot on the first rung. She spun around and began to descend the ladder.

Glenn paused, and looked down.

 _Who had told him that?_

Everyone. Everyone said he was hot-headed. Everyone was always comparing him unfavourably to his brother. Except he can't remember any specific instances, or specific people. Neighbours, maybe? Or the Smithy's business clients? Nobody who had really known him.

Glenn heard the clang of something hitting metal, and a piercing "Ai-eeeek!"

He looked up, and only had a second to rush forward and put his arms up, before Marcy came crashing down into them.

"Ow," Marcy said, shifting in his arms and frowning down at her shins.

Glenn just looked at her for a second. The lace from her dress was irritating the skin on his wrist.

She was so small. She barely weighed anything at all, Glenn thought.

"Can you get your hand off my butt?" Marcy said.

 _Shit._ His hand really was up her skirt, cradling her thigh.

Glenn scrambled to set her down. He swung her down, so he was holding her under the arms, and gently lowered her to the floor.

Marcy stepped down on her left leg first, and then winced as she shifted her weight to the right. She quickly eased up on it, bending to sit down, and crossing her legs.

Glenn sat down across from her and leaned down over his knees, so their faces were on the same level as much as possible.

"I- I apologise," Glenn rushed out. "I heard about what happened with that other soldier… Varius? I should have been more careful. More sensitive. I-"

Marcy leaned forward and slapped him across the cheek, shocking Glenn into silence.

"Shut up!" Marcy said. "Shut up and don't, like, talk to me like that! Don't look like you feel sorry for me. I hate that. I, like, _really_ detest it!"

"But-" Glenn protested.

Marcy leaned forward and slapped him across the other cheek before he could get another word in.

"Would you _quit it!_ " Glenn seethed, gritting his teeth and losing his temper. "I'm trying to apologise."

"Don't apologise!" Marcy commanded, drawing back. "Don't act nice! Don't _act_ like you understand!"

Glenn swallowed his complaints and, at a loss for words, met Marcy's frown with his own.

He could already feel himself excusing her angry responses. Somehow, he just couldn't see the situation the same way anymore.

Marcy held his gaze for a minute, before her lip wibbled. She crossed her arms on her lap, and collapsed her head down on top of them.

Her ox-horn buns swayed as she shook her head. And Glenn thought she was crying for a minute, but when she spoke again, her voice was clear.

"I hate this," she said softly. "This is, like, what, the second time you've seen me get hurt? I hate it."

Marcy tuned her head sideways, and didn't look at Glenn.

"I thought this would be easy," she said. "The General came to the village where Luccia and I were staying for the summer, and Luccia told me to, like, keep my head down and try not to get noticed. And I would have, except that man had a knife, and he tried to stab the General, and it was easy to use my wires to restrain him. And now everybody's saying I, like, killed him, and I don't know if I should tell them I didn't, or not. But I didn't! Not then, at least. And Luccia told me I was mature for my age, and the other kids I knew were, like, pretty stupid, so I thought this would be easy. But it's not, and I hate it.

"I hate it here," Marcy said, looking up at the mobile hanging from the ceiling.

Marcy had talked a lot before – been insufferably loud before – but she had never shared anything so personal.

Glenn waited a minute before speaking.

"You're wrong. I do understand," he said. "Well, not all of it, but I thought this would be easier too…

"And I know what it's like to be younger than everybody and feel left out," he added.

Marcy snorted. "You don't get it."

"I do," Glenn insisted.

If Marcy disagreed, she didn't say so. She looked down at her foot and frowned.

"It got all twisted when my foot slipped," she said. "My ankle, I mean."

"I can take you to the medic," Glenn offered.

"No!" Marcy said, vehemently. "I hate the medic! You'll just have to do it."

Glenn restrained an exasperated sigh.

"I'm not really trained for healing-" he began.

"Just do it anyhow!" Marcy commanded. "Your, like, innate element is green, right? Just twist my foot back into place and cast a healing spell!"

Marcy uncrossed her legs and kicked her right foot out, so her boot hovered in front of Glenn.

"…Isn't your innate element blue? Why can't you-" Glenn started, but Marcy silenced him with a glare.

She waited, as Glenn tentatively reached forward and undoing the laces on her boot. The cord unravelled, and Glenn slowly rocked the boot back and forth on Marcy's foot, trying to loosen it and remove it gently, so as not to hurt Marcy.

Without the laces holding it in place, though, the boot already seemed impossibly loose. And he pulled it down to reveal Marcy's peach-colour skin, slowly transition down her foot to turn pale and clammy and scaly and blue.

Amazed, Glenn pulled Marcy's right boot off completely.

Inside… was a fin – pale, dry, and translucent – which unfolded to about twenty-five centimetres in length.

And Glenn remembered what the soldiers had said about Marcy and her webbed feet. It wasn't the first piece of gossip that actually turned out to be true today. But the way the other soldiers had described it – like Marcy was some kind of mythical frog monster – had made it hard to believe. They hadn't made it sound like something which, at its source, had a very rational, logical cause.

"You're a Demi-human," Glenn said simply.

He felt for the tendon surrounding Marcy's scale covered… ankle(?) and quickly twisted it back into place.

Marcy winced, but she hid it well. The tiny sliver of pain that seeped through her expression was replaced with anger in a flash.

"I'm not a Demi-human," Marcy said.

"It's fine if you are-" Glenn started, but Marcy cut him off fiercely.

"I'm _not_ a Demi-human! I'm not half human, or three quarters human. I'm human. I'm a person. One hundred percent!"

Glenn looked up, scanning her with his eyes to make a full picture. The blonde hair and blue eyes. The pink dress and gloves. The heavy breastplate. The scabs on her knees. One foot, covered in a large brown boot. The other, a pale blue fin.

The way her fists were balled and her shoulders were held tight. Her bellicose nature and her sudden flashes of obedience and vulnerability. The gestures that so ineffectively communicated her distress.

Glenn looked down, and reached for his elemental spells. Let the cool green light spread out over Marcy's wound, pulling the scales and skin and muscle and bone together.

"Yes," Glenn agreed. _Human... One hundred percent, huh?_ "I guess you are."

.

.

Two years later, when Glenn is traveling through Mount Pyre with Luccia and Serge, to find Fort Dragonia and the secret of the Frozen Flame, he runs into the _three_ Devas.

Karsh blinks at him.

"Huh? Is that you, Glenn?!" he asks, confused.

They're standing on a bridge of land over the hot ground and the fiery pit.

Glenn sputters.

He knows what he wants to say. He has the words somewhere. That this is really important. That there are things more important than always being on Karsh's side.

The problem is he never really comes to believe that.

"And... You're with Luccia!" Karsh sounds scandalised and betrayed. "Hey, hey, hey! What the hell is goin' on here?! Why are you with these bozos? Huh?!"

"Please, Karsh, we need to get through," Glenn finally coughs out. "I need to see... I need to see for myself what's happening! Even if that means leaving the Dragoons..."

Today, Glenn will see the evidence for himself. And someday, he'll understand it. Glenn will be a man that can stand on his own two feet, like Dario was. One day, he'll catch up to Riddel and Karsh and the others.

"Hah!" Karsh can't contain his laughter. He sets his hands on his hips. "You call yourself a _Dragoon_?!" he sneers cruelly.

It hurts.

Karsh doesn't hold back later, when they fight.

Marcy clenches her fists at her side and juts her chin up.

"I don't care about you, Glenn!" she shouts. "I don't care about you, Luccia! I don't care about Glenn or Luccia!"

She unleashes the bulk of her anger at Serge. And not just Serge. She has a personal vendetta against Serge's great-grandmother and the whole rest of his family, from the sound of it.

Marcy doesn't hold back when they fight, either.

But Glenn looks to Luccia.

Luccia just smiles, but he knows she can see the tears forming behind Marcy's eyes just as well as he can.

Glenn never thought he'd ever have somebody who wanted to catch up to _him_. Who he'd be forced to leave behind.

And that hurts, just a little bit more than Karsh's harsh words, and Karsh's harsher axe blows.

It hurts really _good_.

Glenn's elated. He's reassured. Now he knows for a _fact:_ there _are_ things more important than always being on Karsh's side, things that can cut him deeper. Marcy's proof of that.

It makes him feel just a little bit more human.

.

.

A week after their discussion in the Viper Manor library, they get into a fight about something stupid.

Marcy asks him about fighting manoeuvres specific for dragon-riding warriors, something Glenn knows nothing about and Riddel's teaching manual doesn't cover, and Marcy won't drop it when Glenn tells her as much. And pretty soon they're snapping at each other about everything from the weather to each other's competence as a Dragoon.

Glenn ends up placing the blame squarely at Marcy's feet when he's too distracted to notice he's run his dragon right into a bush of poison ivy.

His dragon's scaly hide is immune to its effects, but Glenn isn't.

And then at some point Marcy slams her hand against her saddle in frustration, which does more to hurt her hand than the actual saddle, and they're both _furious_ with each other.

"I, like, don't know why I put up with you!" Marcy yells at him, when they're finally back at the stables, dismounting. "You're brainless! And… stupid! And idiotic! And… stupid!"

"I can't say why I bother with you either!" Glenn snaps back.

Because Marcy may be his superior, but she's the only superior he's worked with that talks down to him just _because_. And not because she's afraid Glenn will be promoted above her head if she doesn't constantly send in negative reports about his behaviour.

Besides, he's not going to pretend there's a world of experience and professionalism and rank between them, when there isn't.

They trade insults and curt words for a little bit longer, until the stable keeper, who has long since learned to stay out of it, comes and leads their dragons away back into their stalls.

"Then get out of here!" Marcy says, pointing towards the manor and stomping her foot. "I, like, don't want to see your ugly, _scar_ ro-ed face again! I don't need you to learn how to do this! I don't need you for _ANYTHING_!"

"Then you should have told me six weeks ago," Glenn mutters darkly, under his breath.

Marcy hears, and levels a truly furious glare at him.

"I don't want to see you EVER AGAIN!" Marcy shouts. "I hate you!"

They part ways, steaming, and one of the soldiers he runs into on his way back to the manor entrance asks him if they've had another lover's tiff.

And Glenn runs at the soldier, disarming him in one swift blow, lifts him up by the collar, and asks if he'd like to try repeating that.

Pretty soon, they'll learn. Just like they have about Miss Riddel and Dario and Karsh and General Viper. They'll learn to keep their flapping mouths shut about Marcy so long as they're around him.

It certainly won't do much for his popularity, Glenn thinks, sitting in the mess hall later. Maybe it was just his imagination, but the soldiers that are unlucky enough to be seated within a few metres off him look especially glum, deprived of yet another subject of interesting mealtime conversation.

Glenn sighs and eyes the door wearily, between mouthfuls of fish soup.

It won't be today, but maybe tomorrow, or the next day – Marcy will burst through those doors and insist on restarting their riding lessons. It was what she always did. And then they'd have a couple good days and a couple bad, before everything would blow up all over again.

And Glenn just had to sit here and wait for it to happen.

He turns his spoon over in his hand and thinks about how much he dislikes meals here – the soup and the company and the sitting and the waiting.

And then, Glenn thinks, maybe he doesn't have to do it like this. Maybe he can nip the whole thing in the bud.

Glenn stands up suddenly, grabbing his soup bowl in one hand, and his dessert cup, filled with caramel custard, in the other. He walks towards the kitchen, to where Orcha and his helpers are waiting. One of them looks up, as Glenn approaches.

"Could I get a tray?" Glenn asks. "And another cup of pudding?"

The kitchen helper frowns. What was his name supposed to be, again? He's another one of the foot soldiers, and Glenn should address him properly…

"I'm very sorry, Sir Glenn," he says. "As you know, trays are for kitchen use only, and there is not enough for everybody to have seconds."

Glenn sighs. "I do not ask for my own sake. I-"

"I'm sorry, Sir Glenn. But that was final."

Glenn's brow furrows. And they both just stand there, on opposite sides of the kitchen partition.

And Glenn doesn't want to do this but, dammit, if everyone's going to shove him into this role anyhow, he may as well use it to whatever advantage he can.

"I think you can make an exception," Glenn says simply, "for Miss Riddel's brother-in-law."

The kitchen helper stiffens, and chances a glance over at Orcha.

Orcha lumbers up and faces Glenn.

"Wha'CHA wastin' my time about?" he says. "Don'CHA try to pull one over me. Miss Riddel and your bro were never married."

"I can always arrange for Miss Riddel to come clarify the nature of our relationship, then," Glenn says firmly.

Orcha holds his gaze firmly for a minute, and then sighs. "I don't think ya know what you're doin', but if that's how you're gonna play it, Sir Glenn…"

Orcha makes a signal with his hand and walks off to resume cooking, yelling at his other helpers not to slack off.

They take Glenn's dishes and rearrange them on a tray with an extra serving of pudding.

"Many thanks," Glenn says, bowing stiffly. "I'll be right back."

And then, before any of them can process it, he makes a break for the door.

"Oi! Wha'CHA think you're doin'? You can't just run off with my dishes!" he hears Orcha shouting behind him, along with the peel of laughter that's building in the mess hall. But he ignores it.

He runs down the hall, halting in front of the door to Luccia's lab, and balances the food tray on one arm as he goes to knock on the door.

He listens as his fist raps against the hallow wood.

There is a bustle in the lab, and the door cracks open.

Glenn can see Luccia's shining glasses peer out the door.

"Vot-? Oh, it is you," Luccia says.

Glenn nods his head slowly.

"'ave you returned to take part in my experiments?" Luccia says eagerly.

Glenn shakes his head. "No."

Luccia sighs, but stands aside to let him pass.

"Vell den, you vill be 'ere to see Marcy," she says. "I am very busy. Children vill be sitting in de back corner."

She walks off to return to her work, and Glenn enters the room. He spies Marcy and makes a beeline to her position in the rear left of the room.

She watching a bunch of mice scrambling over each other in a cage. Except, when Glenn looks closer, he sees they're not mice at all, but some kind of strange round creatures with pink and white fur.

Marcy turns to him.

"Oh. It's you," Marcy says, sounding uncannily like Luccia had a moment earlier.

Marcy fidgets on her feet. "Did you need something?" she asks softly.

It's as much of an apology as Glenn expects to get.

"It's mealtime. I thought I'd come eat with you," Glenn says.

"Orcha doesn't deliver my meal until later," Marcy frowns. "And anyhow, the food he makes me is, like, a lot better."

Glenn just stands there, holding his tray.

"Oh just, like, sit down over here!" Marcy says, pushing him resolutely over towards one of the lab's benches. Glenn sets his tray down on the bench next to him, and Marcy sits on the other side of it, with her legs dangling down, one on each side of the bench.

"Thanks," Glenn says, lifting up his soup bowl and sipping some of the broth.

They sit there a minute. Glenn eats and Marcy watches him, tapping her fingers against the wooden seat of the bench.

"I'm not really much of a dragon rider," Glenn confessed, for what seemed like the hundredth time. "I thought that, if I took my meals with you, we could maybe forego the riding lessons."

Marcy blinks at him.

"Karsh- _Sir_ Karsh is a much better rider than I am," Glenn says. "I'm sure I can arrange to have him teach you how to fight while riding a dragon. And I can vow that he'll treat you with the proper respect." Glenn salutes. "I'll make sure of it."

Marcy frowns. "N-no, that's okay," she says.

Glenn feels his forehead twitch. He needs to make this arrangement work somehow. He can't continue on with these riding lessons, as is.

"Sir Karsh may appear gruff," Glenn persists, "but I assure you-"

"I said I don't want to!" Marcy snaps.

She reins herself in the next moment, though.

"I think I'm going to focus on other things for now," she says. "I'm not a very good rider either… I think I'm going to, like, work harder at what I'm good at, like elemental magic, and using my wires. I'm going to be strong."

Marcy sounds determined.

"So, that's fine," Marcy says. "We'll, like, meet for dinner together instead."

Glenn exhales. He hadn't even realised he was holding his breath in the first place.

His plans, for once, have gone off without a hitch.

"So you, like, better be here tomorrow night at eight," Marcy says firmly. "It's an official order! You can't be late!"

Glenn smiles and nods at her, and Marcy narrows her eyes. She puffs her cheeks and lets her feet sway back and forth, dangling over the side of the bench above the floorboards.

Glenn reaches down to his tray and picks up the extra cup of pudding he brought from the kitchens. He lifts it up and holds it out to Marcy.

"Do you want my pudding?" he asks.

"I'm not a kid!" Marcy snapped, and she glared at him contemptuously, before swiping the pudding cup out of his hands.

.

.

* * *

AN: Apologies to anyone who thought this story was a Glenn/Karsh romance, instead of a story about Glenn and Marcy being worst friends.

In English, the prefix "demi-" means half, and the Japanese term 亜人 (characters meaning "sub-" and "human" respectively) seems equivalent. If Demi-humans were originally the mixed-race offspring of Dragonians and Humans, I guess the term kind of makes sense. But a couple generations in, and it's got to be a scientifically inaccurate term, at the very least. To me it seemed like it might contain the unfortunate implication that they are somehow lacking as both human and dragon. Although Demi-humans seem to refer to themselves as such without problem. Reappropriation? And why Demi-human and not Demi-dragon in the first place?

The actual sociology of the CC universe is a mystery, but it seemed like the kind of thing that might bother Marcy. So when Marcy says she's not half human, it's a play on words. She's not actually denying that she's Demi-human, but denying the implication, imagined or not, that she's lacking.

We'll be back on track with the rest of the cast next chapter. And that being said, as we leave her behind for a while, I'd be very curious if my dear and few readers have any input on Marcy. It's probably the first time I've ever written a character to be so purposefully grating, while still intending them to be a protagonist. Did you hate her? Love her? Hate her but feel sorry for her anyhow? Let me know if you can.


End file.
